Mark Stoops (Vicky Graff Photo)
Mark Stoops certainly has heard the criticism directed toward him because of Kentucky’s 3-6 mark this season when the Wildcats felt they were poised to possibly have a banner season.
There has been some speculation Stoops might decide to resign and walk away from about $40 million left on his contract. There has been some speculation that maybe UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart will decide to let Stoops go and buy out his contract.
Nolan Media columnist John Huang — never one to be shy at a press conference — asked Stoops Monday at his weekly press conference about the speculation he would retire when the season ends in three weeks.
Stoops didn’t hesitate when he answered.
“Zero percent chance I do that. Next question,” Stoops said.
Zero percent. That leaves the coach no wiggle room. However, my guess is that Stoops would have said there was “zero percent chance” he would leave UK a few weeks before he was in serious talks with Texas A&M about a year ago. That’s why as strong as Stoops’ denial was, the speculation won’t stop.
Kentucky still has home games with in-state foes Murray State and Louisville along with a road game at Texas, a potential national champion.
Stoops prefers to concentrate on those games and not his future and I do believe him on that.
“We still have a quarter of the season left. It’s up to us on how we decide to finish,” Stoops said Monday. ” I trust our team, I believe in our team, and we’ll be excited to get back on the field today.”
Kentucky has lost four straight games since an upset win at Ole Miss that many thought would rejuvenate UK’s season. Kentucky’s streak of eight straight bowl games will end unless the Cats win out and both Texas and Louisville are going to be huge challenges for UK.
Kentucky’s instability at quarterback and offensive coordinator in recent years has contributed to a non-productive offense. In the last four years the Cats have had three transfer quarterbacks, two offensive line coaches, two running backs coaches and two wide receivers coaches.
UK’s 2025 recruiting class has 20 players from 10t states and ranks No. 20 nationally. Still, Stoops and his staff will need to do some major work in the transfer portal to hopefully help fix roster holes next season if he’s really back like he says he will be.
6 Responses
Stoops already resigned. It’s a prolonged resignation that began when he hired an OC that disrupted an offense with a system and players with complex schemes. UK has never recovered and the damage has spread to the entire locker room, taking the defense down with it.
Players are disconnected from the coaches when they show up to play UGA and Ole Miss but mail in the games against Vandy, SC & AUB. It’s not just the losses to those teams, it’s the no-show, don’t care, mentally absent message sent to the BBN which tells the tale.
This is what bothers me too. The team plays with no energy. The last game we played we had a offsides penalty that I watched about 5 times. Because I have never seen anything like it. The whole team jumped offsides Eli Cox hiked the ball and literally didn’t even move. A 6th year senior almost 25 years old. Still committing freshman penalties. Brock is a redshirt junior? 4 years of college football and he can’t see wide open receivers running across the middle right in front of him? The problem with this team is nobody leads by example. Brown and key getting unsportsmanlike penalties??? Brown has more penalty yards than he does receiving yards. I’m starting to think having Brown kinda hurts us. Let me tell you why!!?? He runs terrible routes for one and for two that’s what his job is and has been for 3 years and he still runs very bad routes which hurts his chances of getting the ball thrown to him. When he is open from the bad route he ran he drops the ball. If he doesn’t drop the ball he misses a block or gets a penalty. This is the play that has killed us all year and from someone who has played a ton of football here. There is no more excuses at this point. He’s literally gotten worse at receiving since his freshman season. Maybe because he had Levis throwing him the football? Idk but for whatever reason Kentucky players feel like all they need is one good year to make it to the NFL. Its almost like Kriisa comment congrats on making it applies for our football team. Walker, Hairston, Brown, Key, Vandagriff were all possible draft picks at the end of this year. Besides Walker who has slipped to late first round early second round. These 4 guys need to return and prove they can play consistently at a NFL level. Key has had a above average year. He is the only guy on the list that has made the plays I thought he would make. If we could build around these 5 guys which I thought we did this year we could have a pretty good offense next year. Maybe get 5-6 offensive lineman in the portal. We know were stuck with Stoops unless Florida State or Iowa offer him which I doubt they do after this terrible year. The only thing we can hope for is that we miss a bowl game again next year and he’s fired. They won’t fire him now his buyout is way to high. It will be 33 million after next year and that’s a maybe about next year. I think Barnhart wants him to leave for another job at this point. Its not going to happen the same way it did with Cal as it does with Stoops. At least cal did win some big games in his coaching and is a elite recruiter. Stoops just has big dog in his corner that’s all.
Stoops would do well to have you as an assistant putting a bug in his ear each time he is ready to do something dumb. Likewise with the clueless OC.
I am so sad and disappointed in the football team. Something is wrong. Don’t know if it is the players, coaches or what. It is too late to salvage the season, but hopefully they will have a decent showing these last 3 games. I still love them. GO CATS.
With you Kathy and hope these last 3 go better
$64,000 question…
When is the AD held accountable for wasted funds…
$9 Mil/yr for the fraud for a lifetime
$9 Mil/yr for Stoops equates to $2.25 Mil/win
Here’s the question, now valued at about $25 Million per year…:
Was the UK AD consulted to determine that pseudo-Dr-Falsie would get $14 Million for 2 years of insuring the Woohan Virus (aka COVID-19 & its continuing destructive derivatives) would still be playing havoc worldwide?
Secret contracts (don’t forget the TLT extension) are usually a secret because it’s a very bad decision!