Roman Harper doubles down on 'soft' comments regarding Kentucky

After Kentucky’s big 26-16 victory of Florida in The Swamp, Mark Stoops and the Kentucky football team did not shy away from some public comments made leading up to the game. SEC Network football analyst Roman Harper called the Wildcats ‘soft’, and the folks in the Joe Craft Football Training Facility took that personal.

After the big win, Mark Stoops yelled “Who’s soft now!” to his team in the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium locker room and dropped references to Harper’s comments in postgame interviews. Earlier this week, Kentucky super senior cornerback Keidron Smith did the same on “SEC Now”. Roman Harper was in studio that day alongside Alyssa Lang and Matt Stinchcomb.

“We have respect for ourselves,” Smith said. “We knew we could go in there and get a win. We weren’t trying to prove anybody wrong. Our mindset was to come in there and be a hard-fought team. We got called soft earlier in the week so we had a little extra motivation about that but we came in there in the Swamp. We had a little adversity, but we battled out, stayed together as a team, and came out with a win.”

Harper got his chance to respond on Friday afternoon leading off “The Paul Finebaum Show”. The former Alabama star is not backing down from his comments.

“At least I know they’re listening. That is what I will take from it,” Harper told Finebaum on the campus of Auburn University for Friday’s on-site show. “My opinion still really has not changed from my first take. I thought Kentucky played well. I thought Florida helped them out a lot. But overall Kentucky was more mentally tough and outperformed them.”

“They won the game. I still don’t think they’re great offensive line wise upfront. I still don’t think they’re pushing guys around like I’m used to seeing from a Kentucky team.”

Well, then. I’m not sure many people saw that coming. Harper went on to explain that the success that the Cats had on the ground seemed to have more to do with schematics and inefficiency of the opponent.

“I thought they found a really nice weak spot of Florida’s defense which was re-creating the edges,” Harper said. “Florida did not set an edge on defense and because of that Kentucky was successful running the football late in the game. But you look early in that game, Kentucky could not run the ball that well but I do give Kentucky a lot of credit and their coaching staff a lot of credit because they didn’t take it personally when I said that.”

I think they might have taken it just a little bit personally. Harper even decided to take what appeared to be a victory lap in the interview on the SEC Network.

“Also, I want to say, I’ve had at least five Kentucky fans come up and thank me this week, Paul. And I just want to say, at least you’re listening and I actually did you a favor by telling you the truth and you played better because of it,” Harper claimed. “I’m sorry that it took all that for this to come out but I’m happy for Kentucky. I love this coaching staff because they did not take it personal. All they did was, we’re going to implement our own game plan and do what we need to do.”

Harper went on some more about how the fans take all of the media comments more personal than the coaches and team but wanted to let everyone know that he is actually a Kentucky basketball fan.

“I like Kentucky Basketball,” said Harper. “I’m a big fan of Kentucky Basketball. I do. I’m just glad they — I just know the coaches implemented a game plan that was going to help them win the game and they listened to me.”

After Finebaum stated that Kentucky had great football fans and that Harper would see that when “SEC Nation” makes the trip to Lexington, Harper appeared to take another shot at Kentucky football.

“Especially for a basketball game. We’re going for a basketball game,” Harper told Finebaum. “As long as we’re going to do a basketball game, I’m excited.”

I do not think Roman Harper will be getting many Christmas cards anytime soon from the Big Blue Nation.