Mark Stoops’ brother Mike won’t be joining the Kentucky football staff
A family reunion won’t be happening at the University of Kentucky.
Multiple outlets previously reported that Mike Stoops, the brother of UK football head coach Mark Stoops, was close to being hired as the final assistant to round out UK’s football staff. Stoops is continuing to work on making a hire for that open role.
It will not be his older brother, despite an effort to bring him aboard.
“That’s not going to work out, by his choice,” Mark Stoops said during a news conference Monday. “Mike chose to stay (at Alabama). He likes what he’s doing, he likes the learning he’s doing, the work he’s doing with Nick (Saban) there at Alabama. Mike’s a big-picture guy, so the timing of this position and the capacity that it is, he decided to stay there, continue to recalibrate himself and get ready to come back as a coordinator.”
Mark said it “shouldn’t be long” before a new hire is made.
It would not have been the first time the brothers worked together: Mark was the defensive coordinator at Arizona from 2004-2009, the first six years Mike was the head coach at that institution. Mark left Arizona to become the defensive coordinator at Florida State, where he worked through the 2012 season. UK hired him as its head coach in 2013.
Mike last season was a defensive analyst for Alabama following a seven-year stint as a defensive coordinator at Oklahoma, his second go-around with the Sooners. He first served as a defensive coordinator at OU from 1993-2003 before taking his only head coaching job with Arizona, where he stayed until he was fired about midway through the 2011 season after a 1-5 start.
Like Mark, Mike started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Iowa, their alma mater. He was a position coach for one season with the Hawkeyes and spent seven years at Kansas State before landing at Oklahoma when the Sooners hired his and Mark’s most accomplished brother, Bob Stoops, as its head coach.
UK’s nepotism policy disallows the employment of an individual over whom a related employee is a supervisor except in cases where it is decided to be “in the best interest of the university.” In those cases, “prompt disclosure of the relationship” is necessary along with the approval of an appropriate senior administrator.
