Eric Wolford got a raise and is UK's fourth highest paid assistant coach. (Vicky Graff Photo)
If you followed Kentucky’s 2024 football season, you certainly know that the team’s most criticized position group was the offensive line.
Fair or not, the offensive line got the majority of the blame for UK’s inept offense. So count me as surprised when Adam Luckett of Kentucky Sports Radio reported Tuesday that Wolford has a new contract that will give him a $100,000 raise in July despite being part of UK’s offensive woes in 2024. He will make $900,000 in 2025 and then get bumped to $925,000 in 2026.
Wolford was at Kentucky the first time in 2021 when Kentucky won 10 games and two of his starters, Luke Fortner and Darian Kinnard, are still playing in the NFL. However, remember both of those veteran players were already at Kentucky when Wolford arrived.
Wolford, 54, bolted for Alabama after the 2021 season. It was not a graceful exit but his connections to UK head coach Mark Stoops got him back to UK last season after Wolford was not retained at Alabama after head coach Nick Saban retired.
Luckett also reported that Wolford agreed to a $500,000 buyout that he would pay UK if he leaves the Cats for another coaching job like he did before.
Wolford is now UK’s fourth highest paid assistant coach behind defensive coordinator Brad White ($1.7 million), offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan ($1.35 million) and associate coach/recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow ($1.3 million).
Wolford is making more than linebackers coach Mike Stoops ($700,000), special teams coordinator/running backs coach Jay Boulware ($575,000), defensive line coach Anwar Stewart ($525,000), co-defensive coordinator/defensive backs coach Chris Collins ($500,000), safeties coach Frank Buffano ($440,000) and receivers coach L’Damian Washington ($400,000).
Of course, Stoops makes $9 million per year.
Kentucky now has four assistant coaches under contract for more than one season: Wolford, Hamdan, Marrow, and Washington.
7 Responses
Coaches should get paid raises by how successful the program is doing not just handed out regardless. When will the bleeding stop. Barnhart is a fool of himself.
Helped his buddy get an extra $100K if the staff is dismissed 🤷♂️💩
Barnhart has been silently endorsed by the administrators responsible for his hiring & being sustained after multiple costly failures with long term and life-time contracts.
UK obviously has its own deep state which includes the pathetic AD & the enablers with the authority to fire him, but instead have silently supported him.
Stoops is overpaid by mega-millions and now he is overpaying the gigantic failure OL coach, who ran to ALA showing how classless he is.
Someone needs to stand up and earn their keep by purging the costly athletic program losers.
I agree 100%. Barnhart put himself him in this situation for rewarding coaches with long contracts once you do that the coaches aren’t as hungry as they once were because win or lose they are still making a shit load of money. I seen Paul Finebaum break it down basically that Stoops is getting a million for every win. That’s disgusting. That he is rewarded a million for beating eastern Kentucky type schools. Then he has his brother and friends all on the staff. This isn’t your usual football operation were you have different backgrounds with every coach. We have 6 coaches from Youngstown Ohio who’s population is like 20,000. How do you even get 2 college coaches out of such a small town but 6 on one sec team something is seriously wrong. I’m honestly starting to think Stoops also gets some kind of kick back from all the coaches he’s employed from Youngstown. Its like Stoops has a Coaching staffing agency in Youngstown and tells them ill hire you but you have to give me 10% of your salary. Why else is there so many coaches on the football staff making over a million dollars a year? The head coach makes 9 million and we’ve won 18 games the last 3 years. Stoops has made over 27 million in this stretch that’s about 1.5 million per win. You don’t think something is truly wrong with this picture. How does Stoops make twice as much as Pope does? It just doesn’t make sense. I think contracts should work like you get paid at the end of the year based on your performance. We could get Jon Sumerall for probably 4-5 million a year and we would actually have a coach that cares more about football than bourbon and women. Stoops chases all these women around campus with bourbon on his breath.
Nailed it. When just looking at 2024, Stoops was paid &2,250,000 per win!! So he is surely the highest paid $/win coach in the nation!
I did not realize Stoops had a standing order for X number of pseudo-coaches to be hired from Youngstown. Wow!
Don’t forget his brother is on the staff. Bobby Bowden ( who had a pretty GOOD record, WON more games who than any coach ) lost his job because he wouldn’t get rid of OC – HIS SON.
If Barnhart had let Stoops bolt after a 10 win season, the fans would have screamed it was proof he didn’t support football. Barnhart was in a no win situation, but did not have write up a contract that made it so difficult to get rid of Stoops.
From my viewpoint, Stoops is the one that failed to uphold his end of the bargain. There should have been some wording in that contract to allow him to be released with a much less buyout based on his lack of performance.
Barnhart has a done a very good job with all other sports at UK, and no AD can be blamed when a coach just starts slaking or quits. However, as I said, the buyouts in the contracts should be tied to the performance of the team on the court or on the field. They do that for bonuses, it should also be done for buyouts.
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