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Why was Mark Stoops fired at Kentucky? Buyout, record for former Wildcats coach
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- Why was Mark Stoops fired at Kentucky? Buyout, record for former Wildcats coach
The man who was the longest-tenured football coach in the SEC is now out of a job.
Kentucky has fired coach Mark Stoops after 13 seasons, with the university confirming the decision on Monday, Dec. 1, two days after the Wildcats wrapped up a 5-7 season with a 41-0 loss at archrival Louisville .
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"I want to thank Mark for his dedication and leadership over the past 13 years, and as importantly, the friendship that is marked by walking these journeys together," Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart said in a statement . "His tenure transformed the program and reset expectations.
"His time here was filled with memorable victories, a historic run of consecutive bowl appearances, and a commitment to developing young men both on and off the field. We move forward committed to build upon the strong foundation that has been laid and to pursue excellence relentlessly."
Stoops leaves Kentucky as the most decorated coach in program history , with a school-record 82 victories, along with eight bowl appearances and a pair of 10-win seasons. In recent years, though, the steady success that fans in Lexington had become accustomed to started to vanish, leading to his ouster.
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Here's a closer look at why Kentucky fired Stoops:
Why was Mark Stoops fired at Kentucky?
Before Stoops arrived at Kentucky after the 2012 season, the Wildcats were known as a men's basketball school in a football conference, a program with a lengthy and storied tradition on the hardwood that was regularly beat up on the gridiron by its SEC foes.
Under Stoops, though, that started to change.
After going 12-24 in his first three seasons, Stoops led Kentucky to bowl games in each of the next eight seasons, highlighted by two 10-win campaigns that were each capped off by a victory in the Citrus Bowl. His teams regularly recruited well in bordering Ohio (Stoops' home state) and played a tough, rugged style that was true to their coach's background as a defensive coordinator.
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So what changed? How did a coach who accomplished all of that end up getting fired just four years after the second of those two 10-win seasons?
For all the Wildcats managed to achieve under Stoops, they started falling well short of the bar he had set.
In what would be Stoops' final two years, Kentucky went a combined 9-15, which included a 3-13 mark in SEC play. That stretch marked the first time the Wildcats had finished with back-to-back losing seasons in 10 years, going all the way back to Stoops' earliest years with the program.
Some losses that used to be close started to get even more lopsided, with eight of Kentucky's 13 SEC losses the past two seasons coming by at least 14 points. At least some of that drop-off could be tied to woeful offenses.
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After the 2023 season, Stoops replaced then-offensive coordinator Liam Coen — now the head coach of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars — with Bush Hamdan, after Coen left to become the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ' offensive coordinator. The switch proved to be disastrous. Kentucky finished outside the top 100 FBS teams in scoring offense each of the past two seasons, ending up at No. 119 last season and No. 101 this season.
The Wildcats' struggles started to become most pronounced against their most hated rival.
For a time, Kentucky had dominated its series with in-state foe Louisville, winning five consecutive games from 2018-23, the first four of which came by an average of 30.5 points against the Cardinals and then-head coach Scott Satterfield. The tables have turned in the past two years, though, with Louisville winning both matchups by a combined score of 82-14. In last Saturday's loss, the Wildcats were outgained 440-140 and didn't show anything resembling the fight they had in the rivalry for much of Stoops' tenure.
The 41-point drubbing came about five months after Kentucky had lost associate head coach Vince Marrow, a key figure in helping build the rosters of many of Stoops' best Wildcats teams, to Louisville, where he was hired as the executive director of player personnel and recruiting back in July.
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Though it could have (and likely would have) been overlooked had the program been winning more games, Kentucky also landed in some NCAA trouble in Stoops' final years, with at least 11 players receiving impermissible benefits for work not performed in 2021 and 2022. As a result, the Wildcats had to vacate wins that involved any of the ineligible players.
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Mark Stoops buyout
Stoops is owed a buyout of $37.68 million, according to the USA TODAY coaches salary database .
It's the fourth-largest buyout in college football history, behind only Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M, Brian Kelly at LSU and James Franklin at Penn State. In Franklin's case, his $49 million buyout was significantly reduced after he accepted the head-coaching job at Virginia Tech last month.
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Kentucky had been contractually obligated to pay the full buyout within 60 days of termination, but according to Chris Low of On3 Sports , Stoops told the school he would be willing to negotiate an agreement in which the university would "spread out payments over a number of years."
Mark Stoops record
Stoops went 82-80 across his 13 seasons as Kentucky's coach, including a 70-56 mark after a difficult first three seasons rebuilding a program that had gone 2-10 the season before he arrived.
Stoops is the all-time winningest coach in Kentucky football history, having supplanted none other than Paul "Bear" Bryant for the honor. Stoops is also responsible for two of the Wildcats' four seasons with at least 10 wins.
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That record is adjusted to 72-80 if the NCAA's vacated wins over the aforementioned Level II violations are taken into consideration. Kentucky was Stoops' first — and, to this point, only — college head-coaching job.
Mark Stoops age
Stoops is 58 years old. He will turn 59 on July 9, 2026.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why was Mark Stoops fired at Kentucky? Buyout, record, more to know
