Ortmayer out, Nord in.

News comes today that Steve Ortmayer is out as UK's special teams and tight ends coach. He'll be replaced by former UK and U of L assistant Greg Nord, who had just joined Ron Zook's staff at Illinois in December. Nord was a casualty when Kragthorpe was blown out, but he had been on the staff there for 15 years. As recruiting coordinator, he obviously enjoyed a fair amount of success. Nord was an assistant at Kentucky under Jerry Claiborne.

On this site, I've been openly critical of the job Ortmayer did with the special teams. My thinking was this: Since it has little choice if it wants to compete in the SEC, UK regularly uses its front line players on special teams. We've consistently failed to execute simple blocking schemes on punts and kicks over the past few years. Since the same kids who do everything else are involved, that has to come back to coaching. It is too painful to recount all the times this has killed us.

True, we have had some success during Ortmeyer's tenure both returning and blocking kicks. I believe, though, that this is also a function of having the team's best players performing these tasks. Maybe that isn't fair, but you cannot draw up Derrick Locke's speed on a chalkboard, that's for sure.

I don't have an opinion on Nord. Most people seem to see him as an upgrade. He has a good pedigree. Hopefully he'll help recruiting in Louisville, which will be prime battleground for the program in the near future. At the end, I just feel like this was a move Joker had to make if he was going to put his stamp on the program.

The most curious thing about the move is the timing. Presumably, Joker could have fired Ortmayer when he let Jimmy Heggins and Rick Petri go at the beginning of the year. Maybe Nord's situation changed and he became available. My best guess is that Joker did not want to risk alienating Rich Brooks right after he took the job, and simply bided his time. After all, Brooks and Ortmayer had been together a while and many expected him to step down voluntarily when Brooks left.

Finally, say this for Joker. In his first six months at the helm, he landed three desired position coaches who made arguably lateral moves (from Arkansas, Mississippi State and Illinois) to be here. He has landed a fourth guy from a lower D-1 school (Tee Martin) who may the the best hire of all. He means business, and I like that.