If something doesn’t change, UK is headed for a hard decision on Mark Stoops
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky confronts a $38 million buyout dilemma over coach Mark Stoops
- Team posts 2-5 start and 10th straight SEC home loss, fanbase grows restless
- Late-season wins needed to avoid financial and institutional challenge at Kentucky
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Gameday: No. 17 Tennessee 56, Kentucky 34
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Tennessee football game at Kroger Field in Lexington.
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When the 2025 Kentucky football season began, my view of the UK coaching situation was that there was no situation.
Even with UK coming off a 4-8 slog in 2024, the $38 million contract buyout the University of Kentucky would owe Mark Stoops if it removed him in 2025 without cause (in other words, for losing) made a coaching change financially prohibitive.
Now, seven games into what seems to be speeding toward a second straight lost season for the Wildcats, I fear UK is in a trap of its own making.
In an era of revenue sharing with athletes and UK athletics borrowing money from the university proper to help cover its new expenses, I don’t know how Kentucky comes up with $38 million to buy out a coach.
But unless the 2025 Wildcats make a late-season turn few see coming, I also don’t see how UK runs it back again with its incumbent head coach.
Kentucky took its 10th straight SEC loss and its 10th straight SEC home loss Saturday night at a Kroger Field whose stands were filled (as the country singer Megan Moroney would say) with “Tennessee Orange.” Josh Heupel’s Volunteers hung 504 total yards on the Cats and rolled to a 56-34 victory before an announced crowd of 60,153 fans.
UK lost for the 15th time in its past 17 SEC games in spite of a splendid performance from redshirt freshman quarterback Cutter Boley. The former Lexington Christian Academy star set a new UK frosh record by throwing for five touchdown passes. The 6-foot-5, 220-pound Boley finished with 330 passing yards, the first Wildcats QB to go over 300 yards in the air since Devin Leary passed for 306 yards against Clemson in the 2023 Gator Bowl.
It was the fifth straight loss for Kentucky (2-5, 0-5 SEC) to border rival Tennessee (6-2, 3-2 SEC).
“Very difficult loss, very tough loss,” Stoops said afterward. “(Tennessee) really took it to us. We had not a lot of answers.”
With remaining games at Auburn, vs. Florida and undefeated Tennessee Tech (8-0) at Kroger Field, then road games at No. 10 Vanderbilt and No. 19 Louisville, Stoops needs to find some answers or the university decision-makers are going to have to make a tough call.
My firsthand memory of Kentucky Wildcats football goes back to 1973, the year the venue now known as Kroger Field opened as Commonwealth Stadium. In all that time, Stoops has been the best football coach UK has had.
If anything, his achievements at traditionally pigskin-challenged Kentucky are undervalued.
Eight straight bowl trips (2016 through 2023), two 10-win seasons (albeit the second one, in 2021, subsequently vacated by the NCAA due to rules violations within the UK program) and an overall winning record (for now) of 79-78 in on-the-field results are impressive at a program which last had a head man depart with an overall mark above .500 in 1961.
For Stoops, who has brought substantial joy to The Long-Suffering UK Football Fan, it is a shame that things have gotten to the low point where they are now.
But things have gotten to a bad place.
In the three seasons, 2010 through 2012, prior to Stoops’ hiring, Joker Phillips went 13-24 as Kentucky head coach, 4-20 in SEC games.
That earned Phillips the pink slip.
Over Stoops’ past 27 games, Kentucky is 8-19, 2-17 in SEC contests.
After the Tennessee loss, I asked Stoops what else, other than the rapidly developing Boley at quarterback, he saw that made him think UK can get better — or if he feared he and Kentucky had reached the point of no return?
“For us, it’s been a long time — back-to-back games (with) 25, 26 first downs (Kentucky had 26 vs. Texas, 25 against Tennessee), whatever; close to 500 yards (476 against the Volunteers), five touchdowns,” Stoops said. “I mean, we hadn’t seen that for a while. Yeah, that makes me very optimistic.
“Defensively, I can’t make any excuses. I don’t want a million darts at me. I understand it’s not acceptable. (Tennessee is) a tough matchup for us right now. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Kentucky has had viable chances at season-defining wins this year at home against Mississippi and Texas.
Instead, the Wildcats took two losses, each in one-score games.
Over the final five contests, Stoops could really use some narrative-flipping wins.
There have been UK football seasons in the past that seemed beyond the point of return but were salvaged. In 2006, Kentucky saved the Rich Brooks coaching regime by finishing 5-1 after a 3-4 start.
Ten years later, the first bowl team of the Stoops era started 0-2, but closed the regular season with a 5-2 run to earn a Gator Bowl berth.
Even with Boley and the development of other promising young playmakers like true freshman receivers DJ Miller and Cam Miller, it does not feel like Kentucky is headed for that kind of positive turn in 2025.
If that doesn’t happen, UK is, in fact, in a challenging situation with its all-time winningest football coach and his massive contract buyout.
This story was originally published October 26, 2025 at 1:57 AM.
