Is Kentucky the best state to work in for a major college football head coach?
Contrary to its basketball-mad image, the commonwealth of Kentucky might be — by one widely viewed measure — the best state in the union in which to be a major college football coach.
When Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com put out his annual College Football Hot Seat Rankings earlier this month, the head coaches at Kentucky’s three FBS programs were all ranked as having secure holds on their jobs entering the 2024 season.
Using a ranking scale of 0 (an untouchable coach) through 5 (win or be fired), Dodd ranked the heat on Louisville second-year head man Jeff Brohm as a “0.”
Meanwhile, the job security of Kentucky’s Mark Stoops and Western Kentucky’s Tyson Helton each was ranked as a “1” (“safe and secure” in their positions).
For all that some in the national media like to portray football coaching jobs in our state as plum assignments because the meaningful pressure is on Kentucky’s college hoops head men, the fact is that Stoops, Brohm and Helton have earned their perceived job security by doing good work.
At 73-65, Stoops is UK’s all-time winningest football coach. After starting his Kentucky tenure (2013 through the present) with a 12-26 record, Stoops has subsequently gone 61-39 and has led UK to eight straight bowl games.
Stoops is responsible for two of the four 10-win seasons (10-3 in 2018 and 2021) in Wildcats football history and for two of the nine winning league records (5-3 in 2018 and 2021) that Kentucky has produced since the SEC launched in 1933.
Though he has yet to pierce the Southeastern Conference’s elite tier — where Alabama and Georgia have resided — Stoops has made Kentucky football respectable in a way it has not consistently been since the 1950s.
Last season, in Brohm’s first year as head coach at his college alma mater, the ex-U of L quarterback led Louisville (10-4) to its first double-digit win season since 2013. That campaign included a 33-20 pasting of then-No. 10 Notre Dame.
Brohm also guided the Cardinals to their first trip to the ACC Championship Game since U of L joined that league in 2014 and to a berth in the Holiday Bowl.
Meanwhile, WKU’s Helton (40-26 since taking the job in 2019) has won at least eight games in four of his five seasons leading the Hilltoppers’ program.
Under Helton, Western reached the 2021 Conference USA Championship Game and has played in five bowl games, winning four.
Yet if none of our state’s three FBS head men enter the coming season needing to fear for their jobs, it is a mistake to say they are not under varying degrees of pressure.
For Stoops, the 10-win seasons of 2018 and 2021 raised expectations in the Kentucky fan base.
Stoops is responsible for the only two years in which UK has won more than seven games in a regular season since 1984. Yet because of the raised expectations those two 10-3 campaigns yielded, the 7-6 records Kentucky produced in 2022 and 2023 were deemed, fairly, by many Cats backers to be disappointing.
Moving forward, with Kentucky facing a 16-team SEC that includes Oklahoma and Texas but does not feature divisional play, the task Stoops faces in getting UK football back on the ascension seems even more daunting than it was previously.
Though Stoops is now the dean of SEC head football coaches, he works in an unforgiving league. Of the nine coaches on Dodd’s “hot seat” (meaning, a ranking of 4 or higher on the 0-to-5 scale), three — Sam Pittman of Arkansas (5), Florida’s Billy Napier (4) and Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea (4) — are at Southeastern Conference schools.
With 10 wins out of the gate, Brohm set a high standard for himself at Louisville. But the real pressure for the U of L head man in year two revolves around the regular season’s final game on Nov. 30 at Kroger Field against archrival UK.
Kentucky football has beaten Louisville five in a row and six out of seven in the Governor’s Cup rivalry.
With the Cardinals entering last season’s game with UK at 10-1 while the Wildcats came in 6-5, U of L backers came to the L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium ready for a party. Instead, Louisville fans watched Kentucky rally from 10-down in the third quarter to hang a crushing 38-31 defeat on Brohm’s Cards.
For Brohm, not getting the Governor’s Cup back soon risks undermining the ample goodwill the Louisville native has with his hometown school’s fan base.
At WKU, Helton is up against the sports reality of “more.” It is manifestation of human nature that fan bases grow restless if their favorite team is not climbing the ladder of progress.
For all of Helton’s good work, Western Kentucky has not won a conference championship or had a double-digit win season since the Hilltoppers won Conference USA while going 11-3 under Jeff Brohm in 2016.
So while none of Kentucky’s three FBS head football coaches might enter 2024 under any meaningful threat to their jobs, all three are under some degree of pressure to produce breakthroughs.
