Ahead of Kentucky’s Week 6 game against No. 12 Georgia, a Lexington-based radio station reported that Wildcats coach Mark Stoops went to the administration about negotiating his buyout following a loss to Tennessee in 2024. After his Wildcats dropped their eighth consecutive SEC game with Saturday’s 35-14 loss to Georgia, Stoops refuted any such rumors and said he has no plans of walking away from his position.
“I hate to give anything like that legs,” Stoops said. “There’s zero — I told you last year, right? You know what I mean? You guys could write and say what you want about me but I told you there’s zero chance I’m walking away. Zero. There’s no quit in me. So that’s unequivocally 100% false and anybody who says otherwise is lying.”
There was, reportedly, mutual interest between Stoops and Texas A&M in 2023 after the Aggies fired former coach Jimbo Fisher. Stoops ended up remaining in Lexington and Texas A&M hired Mike Elko from Duke. Elko is 12-5 in his two seasons with the Aggies, who currently rank sixth in the AP Top 25.
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Stoops is 6-11 since the start of 2024. Last season marked the first time that he had a losing record in a 12-game schedule as Kentucky’s coach since 2015. The arrow isn’t trending up for the Wildcats, either, as Saturday’s result dropped them to 2-3 on the year with an 0-3 mark in SEC play. Those two wins were against MAC opponents — Toledo and Eastern Michigan –and they were outscored by an average of 16.7 points in their three SEC losses.
If Kentucky wants to move on from Stoops, it’ll be costly. If the school fired him after this season, it would owe him nearly $38 million within 60 days of his dismissal. That figure goes down by $9 million each season.
This is Kentucky’s first 0-3 start in SEC play since 2019, and the first time that it has lost five consecutive road games since 2015-16.
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