The question for Kentucky football: These days, can a head coach survive a bad season?

Here’s what we do know: Kentucky football has slipped off the rails.

Saturday’s 24-10 loss to Auburn dropped the Wildcats to 3-5 overall. They’ve lost seven straight SEC home games. They are 5-11 since defeating Florida last season at Kroger Field. Their current 1-5 conference mark is the program’s worst since 2013 when UK failed to win a league game in Mark Stoops’ first season as head coach. They are in danger of missing a bowl game for the first time since 2015.

Here’s what we don’t know: In this day and time, can a coach survive a bad season?

I ask that as a Mark Stoops supporter. He’s done great things with the program. He’s had a pair of 10-win seasons. He produced UK’s first winning SEC season record since 1977. He stopped a long losing streak to Florida. He’s beaten Tennessee. He’s beaten Louisville for the Governor’s Cup five straight years. There is no denying Stoops has raised the overall talent level.

Saturday night turned this bad season to worse, however. Auburn entered Kroger Field 2-5. The Tigers had not won an SEC game. Yet, after falling behind 10-0, Auburn ran the Cats off the field. After the first quarter, Hugh Freeze’s team outgained Kentucky 460-109. The second half, it merely ran the ball down the throat of the Kentucky defense to the tune of the most ground yards (326) against a UK defense since 2018.

Asked if anything surprised him Saturday, UK defensive coordinator Brad White said flatly, “I was just surprised how we got pushed around up front.”

Meanwhile, the Kentucky offense continues to spin its wheels. The Cats remain the only SEC team yet to score more than 20 points in a league game. Stoops and offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan played quarterback Gavin Wimsatt instead of starter Brock Vandagriff the entire second half Saturday. Didn’t work. Nothing has worked. Kentucky is 119th nationally in total offense, 124th in yards per play. That’s out of 134 FBS teams.

It can get worse, and probably will. Kentucky plays at Tennessee on Saturday. It plays at Texas on Nov. 23. When Louisville arrives in Lexington on Nov. 30, you can bet Jeff Brohm’s Cardinals will be eager to kick a rival when it’s down.

Mark Stoops won’t be fired. Nor should he be. He’s the all-time winningest coach in program history. There is only one thing that keeps me from betting the house on Stoops being Kentucky football’s head coach for a 13th season in 2025. That’s Dan Mullen.

After a successful run at Mississippi State, Mullen went 10-3 and 11-2 his first two seasons at Florida. He beat No. 7 Michigan in the 2018 Peach Bowl and Virginia in the 2019 Orange Bowl. In 2020, the Gators slipped to 8-4 but still reached the SEC championship game. A year later, Mullen was out of a job.

After a 24-23 overtime loss dropped the Gators to 5-6 overall, 2-5 in the SEC and 2-9 in their last 11 games against Power Five opponents, Florida AD Scott Stricklin fired Mullen six months after giving the coach a five-year extension.

At the time, I remember Stoops expressing support for Mullen but also saying that sometimes things can turn so quickly and become so toxic around a program that the administration feels like the head coach can’t get things turned back around.

I don’t think Kentucky is to that point. Expectations for Kentucky football are not the same as expectations for Florida football. Fan bases and athletic administrations have far less patience than each once did, however. Money changes everything. And these days in college athletics, there is a lot money riding on the success of a university’s football program. A bad season a decade or two ago isn’t the same as a bad season now.

Maybe this season holds a surprise ending. It’s happened before. After a dreadful loss at South Carolina last year, Kentucky bounced back to beat Louisville, then play Clemson to the wire in the Gator Bowl. Maybe this 2024 team and staff will find that something that has been missing all along. For whatever reason.

But if it doesn’t? What then?

This story was originally published October 27, 2024 at 12:23 PM.

John Clay

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-472-4218

John Clay is a sports columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader. A native of Central Kentucky, he covered UK football from 1987 until being named sports columnist in 2000. He has covered 20 Final Fours and 42 consecutive Kentucky Derbys. Support my work with a digital subscription