How hot will the coaching seat be for Kentucky football’s Mark Stoops in 2025?
As the College Football Playoff grinds on, the 2024 season is not yet over — but talk of 2025’s hottest coaching seats has already begun.
An ESPN+ analysis on Jan. 6 of the college football coaches under the most job pressure in 2025 contained a robust eight Southeastern Conference head men.
Among four SEC coaches who were listed within the second-highest tier of “hot seat” was Kentucky’s Mark Stoops.
What has been an estimable overall run by Stoops in one of the more-challenging coaching positions in power conference football has lately gone off the tracks.
UK went 4-8, 1-7 in the SEC, last season. Not only did Kentucky struggle to win in 2024, the Wildcats were boring. In nine games against power conference teams, UK never scored more than 20 points — and the Cats were held to 14 points or fewer in six of those contests.
Over the past two years. Kentucky is 5-14 in games against power conference foes.
In its last 13 home games vs. SEC opposition, UK is 2-11.
A program arc such as that is not sustainable for an SEC head coach.
In spite of the message board wailing at the end of the past Kentucky season calling for Stoops’ job, there was never any realistic chance of UK changing coaches during the current offseason.
For one thing, just as a matter of fairness, the university owed its all-time winningest football coach more time to try to right the ship if Stoops wanted it.
Even setting that consideration aside, the financial implications of changing coaches after the 2024 season were prohibitive.
It is not only that the University of Kentucky would have owed Stoops a contract buyout north of $40 million to remove him without cause this offseason.
Of Stoops’ remaining 2024 assistant coaches, all are under contract through at least the 2025 season. So it would have cost UK just under $11 million more in buyout money — on top of the $40 million plus owed to Stoops — to remove those assistants.
The calculation will be somewhat different after the 2025 season. The buyout for Stoops after 2025 will still be steep, just under $34 million.
However, of the assistant coaches who were on the Kentucky staff in 2024, only associate head coach Vince Marrow and offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan have deals that run beyond 2025. The assistants’ contracts that would expire in 2025 would take roughly $8 million off the buyout costs to UK of changing football coaches after next season.
That reality adds at least a bit of additional heat beneath the Stoops coaching seat.
Nevertheless, the best thing for all parties would be for Stoops, 57, to produce a turnaround in 2025. That would alleviate the need for a debate after next season over whether it would be a wise use of the resources of UK Athletics to pay a football coach more than $30 million to go away.
There have been coaches in football jobs not dissimilar to UK who have gotten their programs back on track following the type of dispiriting season Kentucky just endured.
Matt Campbell went 3-9 in his first season as Iowa State head man in 2016. The former Toledo head man then ripped off five straight winning seasons at Iowa State before the Cyclones sagged to 4-8 in 2022. In 2023, however, Iowa State bounced back to go 7-6. This season, Iowa State went 11-3 and beat Miami 42-41 in an epic Pop Tarts Bowl.
At North Carolina State, Dave Doeren started his coaching tenure with a 3-9 mark in 2013. The Wolfpack proceeded to produce five consecutive winning seasons before slumping to 4-8 in 2019. Since that competitive dip, though, N.C. State has gone 40-23 in the five subsequent seasons and been bowl-eligible every year.
The biggest impediment to Stoops producing a similar “second turnaround” in Kentucky’s football fortunes in 2025 is not the 21 players UK has lost to the transfer portal off last year’s team, 11 of whom have landed at other power conference programs.
If you are going to attempt a “culture change” — which UK, after three straight seasons filled with undisciplined football, desperately needs — some personnel churn is part of that equation.
Kentucky’s biggest obstacle in 2025 is who it will have to play.
Of UK’s 12 foes next season, 10 had winning seasons in 2024. Nine played in the postseason. Eight won eight games or more. Six won at least one postseason game. Three — Georgia, Tennessee and Texas — made the CFP. The Longhorns enter this weekend still alive in the drive to be the 2024 national champion.
Even UK’s 2025 FCS foe, Tennessee Tech, will enter the coming season on a five-game winning streak.
A schedule that carries such a high degree of difficulty is the primary impediment Mark Stoops faces in cooling the fire that will be burning beneath his coaching seat in 2025.
