Searching for Hal Mumme

Every Kentuckian's most beloved sportswriter (his "journalist" credentials being subject to debate these days), Pat Forde, put out an APB for former Cats football coach Hal Mumme in his weekly Dash column this week:

A pair of former SEC coaches gone obscure, Hal Mumme (38) and Joe Lee Dunn (39). The Dash found the former offensive gimmick master at Kentucky and the former defensive gimmick master at Mississippi and Mississippi State at McMurry (Texas) University -- where they got their clocks cleaned on Saturday by Mississippi College. Mississippi College walloped winless McMurry 61-14, scoring three unanswered touchdowns to open the game and leading 31-7 at halftime. And so two cocky guys who always thought they were too smart to play it by the book are now 0-3 in Division III.

Really kicked a man when he was down, didn't he? The McMurry webpage flatters Mumme's career, making him look like a redeemer who just so happens to have "saved" about half-a-dozen lost causes that have literally nothing in common (division, size, geography, academics) beyond their legacy of futility prior to his arrival.  After all, this is the man that plunged the Wildcats into scandal and probation that set any progress he may have made back several years. On a related note, I always thought it odd that Lexington renamed a street "Hal Mumme Way" (the signs are all long gone, obviously) before Tubby Smith, who won a national championship, got his own honorary street in town. But I still have a small place in my heart for the man who tried to throw the football like it was going out of style and got us to a New Year's Day bowl game for the first time in...well... my lifetime. And also, during his reign, my dad was always getting stopped and asked if he was Hal Mumme (the resemblance has faded as Mumme's gone gray and gained a little poundage), so that was good laughs all around.

Earlier in the column, Forde also mentioned this year Wildcats, if only to label them a "Pretender" at 2-0 and about to take 4 losses in the next four games against Florida, 'Bama, Auburn, and South Carolina. I'm not sure what Kentucky would be "pretending" to be... an SEC contender? A BCS contender? No one in their right mind has those kinds of delusions. The only thing I think the Cats would claim to be, at this point, is the best football team in the state.