WAYNE KNUCKLES: Meeting Coach Mark Stoops in South Florida

Fate has a sense of humor.

Two weeks ago, Kay and I flew out of Lexington to Fort Lauderdale, connecting through Atlanta, headed for the Florida Keys. As I shuffled past first class — the way us back-of-the-planers always do, equal parts jealous and pretending not to look — I spotted a guy that stopped me cold.

Looked an awful lot like Mark Stoops.

I kept walking. Told myself it probably wasn't him. Kay thought the same thing from her seat. We could barely see up there through the curtain that separates the chosen from the rest of us, so we let it go.

Fort Lauderdale. Rental car shuttle. And there he is.

Or a guy that looks exactly like him. Same build. Same face. Kay just asked him straight out, the way she does when I'm standing there overthinking it.

"Are you Mark Stoops?"

He nodded. Quiet. A little reserved. Yes, I am.

And suddenly I'm sitting three feet from the man I'd spent an entire football season absolutely lighting up through my television screen.

Now look. Kentucky football fans, we've suffered. Chronically. Generationally. But this past season was something else. I said things. Rough things. Questioned his judgment. Questioned his game plans. Said some stuff I probably wouldn't repeat in church or, apparently, in a rental car shuttle in South Florida.

And here he is. Right across the aisle.

You know what I said?

"Hey Coach, how are you doing?"

That's it. That was my moment. My big swinging speech. A decade's worth of opinions and frustrations and I went with the greeting you give your dentist.

He didn't seem particularly interested in small talk, and I don't blame him. The man had just finished a brutal season and probably just wanted to get a car and go somewhere quiet.

But here's what I wish I'd said — what I should have said, if I hadn't been tired and caught off guard and suddenly aware of my own tongue-tied ridiculousness:

Thanks, Coach. For everything. Best of luck in whatever comes next.

Because here's the truth. Mark Stoops is Kentucky's all-time winningest football coach. He had years where he made us genuinely proud, which is not something Kentucky football fans say lightly or often.

The end was hard. But the whole of it wasn't.

So Coach Stoops, if by some miracle you ever read a column written by a hillbilly who couldn't find his words on a shuttle bus —

Thanks for everything.

I meant to say it sooner.

Wayne Knuckles is a 40-plus year veteran of the newspaper industry and publisher of The Wayne Train. He began his career as a sports writer for his hometown weekly newspaper, The Pineville Sun. Visit TheWayneTrain.com to subscribe for free.