Steve Spurrier coached 26 seasons in college football and racked up more wins than anyone else at both Florida and South Carolina, but he never reached a 13thseason at one school like Kentucky's Mark Stoops.
Spurrier jumped to the NFL after 12 seasons in Gainesville to coach Washington in 2002 after winning six SEC championships and a national title.
"Of course, back in my days, the head NFL coaches were making about triple what the college coaches were making," Spurrier said last week by phone from his home in Gainesville while watching the Ryder Cup. "I was watching a special on the University of Miami college football and in the five national championships, they've had five different coaches. That was interesting. Almost all of them went pro after they won a national championship down there. Now the money is pretty much similar. They don't need to worry about going pro to triple their salary. Sort of like what I did, I guess."
Spurrier was the highest-paid coach when he left Florida, making $2.1 million.
Stoops is now making $9 million a year, which puts him ninth nationally.
Georgia football coach Kirby Smart t ops all coaches at $13.003 million.
Stoops and Smart, the No. 1 and 2 longest tenured SEC football coaches respectively, meet Saturday when their teams play a noon game in Sanford Stadium
Stoops, who came aboard in 2013, is the only SEC coach still remaining in place from Spurrier's last season as coach in 2015 when he resigned after six games in his 10thseason with the Gamecocks.
Six of the head coaches now are either retired or not coaching and another, Hugh Freeze, resigned from Ole Miss, went to Liberty and resurfaced at Auburn.
Smart is in his 10thseason in Athens, starting in 2016.
Stoops has never beaten Smart and is 0-12 against Georgia . Kentucky has lost 15 in a row in the series.
Stoops is the nation's fifth-longest tenured coach behind only Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, Utahs' Kyle Whittingham, Air Forces' Troy Calhoun and Clemson's Dabo Swinney.
"It's amazing," Smart said. "Mark's one of my close friends. We've grown because we've been in it the longest together, and he's been in it longer than me. I text him all the time. It's just really amazing what he's done at Kentucky. It's one of those things that I hope they appreciate what he's done because he's done some incredible things. Broken some records up there, been extremely competitive in our league, and that's not necessarily by record. I mean, it is by record sometimes, but the games that he's been in and the way they've played is incredible."
Stoops is 79-75 at Kentucky, but the Wildcats are three years removed now from the program's first top 10 ranking in both the coaches and AP poll since 2007.
The Wildcats are 2-2 and 0-2 in the SEC with the wins against Toledo and Eastern Michigan after going 4-8 and 1-7 in the SEC last season.
"It's a tough run, that's for sure, it's a tough grind no matter where you're at," said the 58-year old Stoops. "Certainly the 13 years here haven't been easy. There's been some ups and some downs. We've had a little continuity within the administration here between our president, our athletic director and myself. We've been fortunate."
The Wildcats were ranked in the top 20 the last two trips to Athens, but have lost 14 of the last 16 SEC games starting with a 51-13 loss to Georgia in 2023.
That November, Stoops was involved in the Texas A&M opening, but no deal was struck.
One of the coaches who was longer tenured than Stoops, Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy, was fired Sept. 23 in his 21st season.
"I would say almost any coach that would last 10 or more years at a school has done pretty well," Spurrier said. "It's of course relative to the success a coach has had in the past. I think everybody knows that. If you coach at Alabama or Georgia or somewhere like that you better win, 9 or 10 every year instead of 6 or 7. Kentucky doesn't have a tremendous football tradition. Mark Stoops, he's done well."
Kentucky, known for being one of the blue bloods in basketball, entered this season with a 191-414-12 SEC record, a .319 winning percentage ahead of only Vanderbilt.
"Anybody could understand just by population and recruiting base for us is a little bit less than some other states, certainly in the South," said Stoops, a former defensive coordinator at Florida State and Arizona. "Everybody can understand that, but we have an unbelievable institution here, a beautiful place to go to school and play football at. It's been a great place. We have a lot of advantages as well."
ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit on College GameDay said Saturday while talking about Gundy: "You get to that 10-year, that 12-year, that same message, that same story, it doesn't have the same impact with the players. Maybe that caught up to him after 21 years."
Some Kentucky fans are ready to move on from Stoops, but he has a hefty buyout.
He would be owed $38.8 million if the school were to fire him and that goes down to $37.7 million as of Dec. 1, 2025, according to USA Today Sports.
Smart has for years praised Kentucky for the physical nature it brings to the games.
"You can tell he inspires his team to play extremely hard and they're always physical," he said. "I just have so much respect for Mark because I know his history. We kind of grew up the same way. Coach's son, defense coordinator, has been at some good places, got a head job, and he's worked his tail off."
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Steve Spurrier on SEC's longest tenured coaches Mark Stoops, Kirby Smart
