It's been long enough. Time for Kentucky to welcome back Hal Mumme
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LEXINGTON — Hal Mumme knows exactly where he'll be at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12. He'll be planted in front of his television in Mississippi, cheering on Kentucky football as it continues its Sisyphean struggle: beating Alabama.
"I'm pulling for Will," Mumme told The Courier Journal in a phone interview Wednesday, Sept. 9, referring to UK's first-year coach, Will Stein. "I don't want it to be 75 years again."
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Mumme knows Stein's situation better than anyone. Because he's walked in Stein's shoes. Mumme was a rookie coach for the Wildcats in 1997. That year, he and the Cats hosted the Crimson Tide. Behind Tim Couch's four touchdown passes, including the game-winning toss to Craig Yeast in overtime, Kentucky ended 75 yards of frustration against Alabama.
That was only UK's second win in the series.
It remains its last.
Drawing on nostalgia, Couch and Yeast will be Kentucky's honorary captains Saturday.
There should be a third: Mumme. He was every bit as essential to topping the Tide as Couch or Yeast. But he's never received an invitation from the university or athletics department. For any game in the past two-plus decades.
It's no mystery why he's the missing man. Mumme's four-season stint ended with his resignation amid a recruiting scandal that had engulfed the program. Mumme himself never was implicated by the NCAA for the violations, the vast majority of which were committed by Claude Bassett, the Wildcats' recruiting coordinator. Those infractions led to a bowl ban and scholarship restrictions for UK.
Looking back on these trangressions now, through the lens of college athletics in 2026?
Here's a sampling: Bassett told a football staffer to send $1,400 in money orders to a high school coach in Memphis, Tennessee. Bassett improperly endorsed and cashed a $500 check from a UK donor. And most heinous of all: Some visiting recruits from that same Memphis high school received jackets ... during an unofficial visit.
The horror! The horror!
It's hard to quantify how quaint these "violations" are now. Not when college athletes are reportedly raking in six figures — some far, far more than that — in name, image and likeness deals. Not when NCAA rules are treated more like suggestions.
Don't like your current reality as an athlete? Just find your nearest friendly judge — preferably one who graduated from your beloved school and will endeavor to interpret the law as a member of the court, not a fan — for a favorable ruling. You'll be back in college in no time! (Just remember to feign a modicum of interest in obtaining another degree.)
College athletics are operating more like minor-league professional sports franchises than ever before. And we're supposed to care about jackets that weren't returned more than a quarter-century ago?
If you find this take repugnant, here's some advice: Don't suffocate from clutching those pearls too tightly.
Loosen that grip, and it permits one to see a path to redemption for Mumme at UK.
Stein already has improved the game-day atmosphere at Kroger Field. It took him all of one game. Want to take that to the next level? Bring back the Air Raid siren that once blared after Kentucky touchdowns. Play Jimmy Buffett songs on the sound system as Mumme takes the field to a raucous reception pregame.
One could say it sounds like too much fuss for a coached who stepped down and left his ex-employer with sanctions. One who had a 20-26 overall record with the Cats. But that's failing to see the entire picture.
While the Alabama victory was as memorable as any, there were other high points during his tenure.
Back-to-back wins over LSU, a feat UK hasn't accomplished since. Two straight triumphs over Louisville, which included a 68-34 pasting in 1998 that saw Couch throw seven TDs and Kentucky tally 801 yards of offense — a single-game school record that still stands. Consecutive bowl berths (1998 and 1999), an achievement the Cats previously had unlocked just twice.
Up and down UK's record book, nearly every offensive mark of note occurred during the days Mumme's clubs were pitching and catching the ball all over the yard. Heck, Kentucky led the SEC in passing every year Mumme was in charge — no small potatoes given Steve Spurrier still roamed Florida's sideline.
Even if violations hadn't surfaced, Mumme knew he might not be long for Lexington.
"The last year there, Dr. (Charles) Wethington, our president, had been run off by the governor, and (then-athletics director) C.M. Newton had retired. Larry Ivy took over," Mumme said of Newton's replacement. "Ivy and I never got along. We never got along right from Day 1, and so I knew it was going to kind of be rocky. But then it turned out to be real rocky. It was not a good ending.
"But in college football, in Division I, there hardly ever is a good ending, you know?"
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These days, the 74-year-old Mumme said he's done with full-time coaching. Last year he served as the offensive coordinator at Centenary College, a Division III school in Louisiana. He didn't make it to Year 2. A double dose of health issues hit him like a blitzing linebacker. First, pneumonia. Then, heart failure.
"So after that, my kids and my wife got together and decided, 'Dad should retire,'" Mumme said.
He keeps himself occupied, and around the game he loves, by running Air Raid Certified. The online series of courses, taught by Mumme, help would-be coaches learn the tenets of an offense he helped popularize. One that has proliferated to every part of the country, seeping into every level of the game.
Oh, he does have one other post-retirement gig.
"My job every day is to swim. I'm keeping the weight down and trying to keep the weight off," he said, "and just (trying to) keep on ticking for the grandkids."
Hopefully that heart beats long enough for his grandchildren to see Mumme take his rightful place as an honorary captain, at a school where he helped create memories that will live long past him.
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Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: It's been long enough. Time for Kentucky to welcome back Hal Mumme