Kentucky football and ‘the curse of the Mark Stoops contract’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky signed Mark Stoops to a $9M yearly contract extension in Nov. 2022.
- Since the deal, Kentucky football has gone 14-19 overall, 6-19 vs. power teams.
- Firing Stoops in 2025 would cost UK nearly $38M under current buyout terms.
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On Nov. 11, 2022, Mark Stoops, Mitch Barnhart and Eli Capilouto put their names to a contract extension that made Stoops one of the highest-paid college football coaches in the country.
At the time that the University of Kentucky brass elevated Stoops’ salary to $9 million a year and extended his pact through the 2030 season, UK was in the midst of one of the best runs in its star-crossed football history.
On the day the deal was signed, Kentucky stood 39-20 overall since the beginning of the 2018 season.
In the previous year, UK had completed its second 10-3 season in four years. Over its entire previous pigskin history, Kentucky had only reached double-digit victories in a season in 1950 (11-1) and 1977 (10-1).
Earlier in that 2022 season, Stoops had passed the iconic Paul “Bear” Bryant to become Kentucky football’s all-time coaching wins leader.
Stoops’ name was being mentioned with midseason coaching openings at Nebraska and Auburn.
So UK athletics director Barnhart and president Capilouto moved aggressively to lock up the most successful football coach in modern Kentucky history.
Yet, almost immediately after Stoops and UK signed their new deal, things began to go wrong.
Literally the day after the pact became official, Vanderbilt stunned Kentucky 24-21 in Lexington to snap a 26-game losing streak in Southeastern Conference games.
Presumably as a result of that dispiriting outcome, UK did not publicly announce its new deal with Stoops in the traditional manner.
Instead, the contract extension was posted, without fanfare, on the UK office of legal counsel webpage. A news release outlining the new deal — dated Nov. 18, 2022, but never released — was also attached.
Not even two full years later, the NCAA took the gloss off Stoops’ 10-3 season in 2021 by ordering UK to vacate those wins due to rules violations.
By that point, it had begun to feel like the 2022 Mark Stoops contract extension was cursed.
Contract changed how Stoops was viewed
At the time Stoops signed the 2022 extension, it made him the sixth-highest paid coach in college football.
Prior to that, Stoops had been widely seen as the guy “doing more with less” at historically football-challenged Kentucky.
At $9 million a year, however, at least some began to see Stoops as a guy being paid like one of the nation’s elite coaches without the Sugar Bowl trips to back that up.
Starting with the shocking loss to Vandy in 2022, Kentucky has gone 14-19 overall, 6-19 against power conference teams, since the lucrative Stoops contract extension.
As a result, many UK backers are decrying the terms it would take to buy Stoops out of his contract without cause (in other words, for losing) after this season.
If Kentucky decided to oust Stoops , it would owe him 75% of the salary remaining through the end of his contract. That means if UK wants to replace Stoops after this season, the buyout to do so would be almost $38 million.
Making that number even more daunting, UK would be required, by contract, to pay the full buyout amount to Stoops within 60 days of his ouster.
Much criticism has been directed at Barnhart for entering into contracts with both Stoops and former Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari in which the buyouts required to terminate the contracts were so high, it essentially made each coach immune to firing.
There is certainly a case to be made that UK, in future coaching contracts, needs to either A.) unlink its buyout provisions from the salary level/length of contracts; or B.) tell coaches they can have a high annual salary or the security of a long contract term but not both.
The risk in that is successful coaches always have other options, and you are raising the chances of a high-performing coach walking away at the height of their run if you seek to make contract buyout terms less favorable than are available at other schools.
Had the University of Kentucky allowed Stoops to be wooed away after the coach’s second 10-win season in 2021, the narrative would have been “Kentucky, the same school that once allowed Bear Bryant to walk, has now let its most successful football coach since the Bear leave.”
The actions of the UK administration show the university feared losing its high-profile coaches when they were riding high more than it was afraid of the risk of getting stuck in a stale dynamic with the same head men if the coaches stopped winning at their previous levels.
After four straight Wildcats men’s basketball seasons of disappointing returns, Calipari got Kentucky off the hook for what would have been a $34 million buyout in the spring of 2024 by leaving of his own volition for Arkansas.
Given how things have gone for UK football since 2022 under “the curse of the Stoops contract,” I wouldn’t count on a similarly convivial ending to the Kentucky head football coach’s long tenure.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 6:27 PM.
