Vince Marrow 'Excited' to Team Up with Jeff Brohm at Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Earlier this week, a gridiron shockwave was sent across the Commonwealth.

This past Monday, it was reported that Vince Marrow, who had served as Kentucky head coach coach Mark Stoops' right-hand man for the last 13 years, would be making the move 90 miles west and joining the Louisville football program. Two days later, head coach Jeff Brohm and the Cardinals officially announced that Marrow had been named their Executive Director of Player Personnel and Recruiting.

To many fans, it's going to take some getting used to seeing Marrow in red after he spent over decade in blue, and pockets of fans are weary about the hire altogether. But for Marrow himself, he's excited to hit the ground running in his new role with the Cards.

"I got a lot of respect for Jeff. We go way back," Marrow said in an interview on 93.9 The Ville this Friday. "It was a situation where, 'Hey, I want to come and work for a good friend, just try to get on the same page in recruiting, and go try to win the national championship.' That's basically what it really is, and I'm excited to be in Louisville."

At first glance, to many, seeing a person who played such an integral role in a run of success that Kentucky hadn't seen since the Bear Bryant days make the jump to Louisville could be a bit of a head-scratcher. However, this was a move that was over two decades in the making.

For as long as Marrow had known Stoops, stemming from their shared time at Cardinal Mooney HS in Youngstown, Ohio, he has known Brohm for almost as long. In fact, the two were teammates in the XFL, both playing for the Orlando Rage during the 2001 season.

When the two eventually got into coaching, especially once Brohm became a head coach, a reunion between the two seemed inevitable at some point in time. Of course, Marrow's interest in positions with other teams during his tenure at Kentucky is well documented, but Brohm had been previously among those trying to woo him away from Lexington while he was at Purdue.

Brohm's efforts to lure Marrow away only continued when he got the Cardinals' job in December of 2022. Chatter of a Marrow-to-Louisville move really started to gain traction not long following the end of the 2024 season. Several months later, Marrow finally decided that this was the time and opportunity to jump on.

"Me and Jeff talked several times, even when he was at Purdue," he said. "We would talk about recruiting, because we recruit against each other and just our relationship for years. I knew when that job opened up, and when they announced that they hired him, I was like, 'Man, we got to really get ready now, because this going to be a different thing.' I knew Jeff's background, I knew his family. It was a situation where I felt, and I'm not lying, I felt that I could see myself working with him sometime soon, because we talked about it. I just wasn't gonna go to Purdue."

While working alongside one of your best friends is certainly appealing, something that also interested Marrow was what Brohm had done during his first two years at Louisville. The Cardinals have gone 19-8 during Brohm's first two years at the helm, which included making the ACC Championship Game for the first time, and snapping losing streaks to both Clemson and Kentucky.

Heading into year three under Brohm, the Cards continue to generate not only top-25 buzz, but are viewed as a dark horse to either win the ACC or make the College Football Playoff.

"I just really feel that they're on the cusp of kicking that door in," Marrow said. "When me and him talk, he's like, 'Hey, we can really do some damage, I think you'd be the missing piece.' And I'm like, 'Don't put that pressure on me, man.' But at the end of the day, you'd like to go work for a guy that you believe in."

Additionally, things had started to trend downwards at Kentucky as well. After going 10-3 during the 2021 season, the Wildcats posted back-to-back 7-6 campaigns in 2022 and 2023, and are coming off of a 4-8 season.

However, Marrow is adamant that his move to Louisville was more about getting to work with Brohm and being able to stay in the state, than it was about abandoning Stoops and the Wildcats.

"It was more about working with Jeff," he said. "I think Jeff is really, really going to do some good things at Louisville. It was more about working for a friend, moving on to something new. ... and it was more staying in the state of Kentucky. I really embraced this state, it's really, like my second home.

"I had opportunities to go to a lot of places. But when this situation rose, I could stay in the state, still do stuff in the state off the football field when certain situations happen. So when we talked about it, it was just like, 'Hey, let's just do this.'"

Friendship aside, from a pure football standpoint, it's understandable why Brohm made so many attempts to hire Marrow. While he was the 'Cats tight end coach all 13 years, Marrow made his hay as their lead recruiting coordinator. It's not hyperbole to say that he is one of the best recruiters in all of college football.

All 12 of UK's recruiting classes while he was their recruiting coordinator ranked in the top-40 nationally, per the 247Sports Composite. Four have ranked in the top-25, and his best class came in 2022 when it ranked as the No. 14 class in the nation.

Of the 25 highest-ranked recruits of the modern era (since 1999) to commit to Kentucky, 19 of them came while Marrow was their recruiting coordinator. In fact, 66 four-star prospects committed to Kentucky during Marrow's tenure (5.5 per year), including 14 top-200 prospects and five in the top-100.

Combine his prowess as a recruiter with Brohm's abilities as a coach, especially with how much Marrow likes how Louisville is emulating how NFL teams are run, and he believes the Cardinals can do some "serious damage."

"Bringing in the right players, getting a roster that's like an NFL roster to go win and win in this league, and then let the chips fall where they may," he said. "If we get in the playoffs, we're gonna try to go win that.

"Jeff has a good staff. I admire a lot of his coaches, I know some of them guys. This is like an NFL situation now, where you have a front office guy, and you have the coach, you have the player personnel people, and we're all on one accord to bring great players in here, and try to go win the championship."

Part of what make Marrow such a phenomenal asset is his ability to maintain relationships - and not just as a recruiter. Over the past couple years, he had been credited with helping keep the Kentucky locker room together, especially in the wake of their 2023 loss at South Carolina. Whether it's with current players or prospective ones, Marrow undoubtedly brings an aspect of culture and togetherness with him to UofL.

"One thing I will not take a backseat to no one, is getting players and building relationships," he said. "But it ain't just that. It's also knowing your own roster, knowing what's going on, knowing if somebody got a problem. I think coaches don't do this enough. They don't really know their players. They just come in that building, and when they go home, they go back to their place, and the coach go back to his home. I am very in tune with my players.

And to the Louisville fans who are still uneasy about bringing Marrow because of his ties to Kentucky, he left no doubt as to where he current allegiances lie.

"Once that contract was signed, it's war," he said. "We're gonna be in some battles, and I know that."

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