The college football coaching carousel keeps spinning in the SEC with the latest victim being Kentucky coach Mark Stoops.
The school is parting way with Stoops after 13 seasons with the school, according to multiple reports on Sunday, Nov. 30. The move comes one day after the Wildcats finished their season at 5-7 with a 41-0 loss to rival Louisville.
Stoops, the school’s all-time winningest coach with 72 official victories, brought unprecedented success to the Kentucky program with eight consecutive bowl appearances from 2016-23. Ten of his victories in 2021 were vacated due to NCAA rules violations. The Wildcats have gone 9-15 the past two seasons and did not qualify for a bowl game.
According to terms of his contract, Stoops is owed a buyout of just under $34 million.
Stoops started at the bottom at Kentucky, inheriting what was then the SEC’s most woeful program. Then won just two games in 2012 under Joker Phillips. Stoops posted losing records his first three seasons with just 12 total victories before the Wildcats returned to the postseason in 2016 in a 7-6 season that culminated in an appearance in the TaxSlayer Bowl.
During the run of eight bowl games in a row, Stoops had 10-win seasons in 2018 and 2021 to account for two of the four double-digit victory campaigns in school history. An NCAA investigation into impermissible benefits erased one of those seasons.
Troubles at the quarterback position and good defense was the theme for latter seasons of Stoops’ tenure. The Wildcats ranked worse than 100th in scoring offense in three of the last four campaigns but their ability to be stingy on defense allowed them to win seven games in 2022 and 2023 before slumping in 2024 and 2025.
Kentucky showed promise in the second half of this season with freshman quarterback Cutter Boley taking over the starting job. The Wildcats played competitively against Texas and beat Auburn and Florida to move within touching distance of a bowl game. But blowout losses to Vanderbilt and Louisville ended those hopes.
Following the defeat to the Cardinals on Saturday, Nov. 29, Stoops told the media there’s ‘Zero percent chance I walk’ when asked about the possibility of stepping down. He was out of a job one day later, putting Kentucky in position of finding a replacement for the SEC’s longest-tenure coach after a whirlwind of hires in the league at Florida, LSU, Auburn and Arkansas.
