With Kentucky football continuing to falter under Mark Stoops, many are wondering if this will be the last season we see him screaming at the refs on the Kroger Field sidelines.
As things currently stand,
if the season were to end today, I believe that Stoops would return for the 2026 season, largely due to athletics director Mitch Barnhart. Kentucky has shown ‘just’ enough promise to think things may get better with a new offensive coordinator, though we have seen that move play out several times. The bigger influence is that Kroger Field has continued to draw big crowds, even though they have lost nine straight home SEC games.
Barnhart, who is typically very conservative when it comes to making coaching changes, will look for any and every excuse to bring Stoops back next year. A big reason for that, especially in the case of Stoops, is that Barnhart wants to make sure UK saves every penny imaginable for things like new projects and stadium renovations, not firing coaches.
I do believe it’s possible UK can get Stoops’ buyout down lower than the $38 million it’s currently at. However, even if the school were to get it somewhere between, say, $20-30 million, it would be a bigger black eye for Barnhart to pay anything of that sort than to endure a 2-10 season next year after giving Stoops one last chance. He’d much rather take one more chance on Stoops and have it go awry than pay the buyout now and have that kind of stain on his resume.
Mitch very much cares about his legacy, which is why he locked up both Cal and Stoops, two guys he felt would lead UK until they retire. Both men stumbled, and luckily, Cal left for Arkansas, saving UK a potential buyout of around $33 million.
Now, Mitch is clinging to what he sees as “his guy.” It’s easy to forget that Stoops was nearly fired in 2016 after a disastrous start to the season. Had that come to pass, then Mitch would have been responsible for the failings of two different football coaches in Stoops and Joker Phillips, not to mention Billy Gillispie nearly killing a seemingly unkillable men’s basketball program.
If that happens, then Barnhart likely doesn’t survive as AD and gets ousted not long after Stoops was fired, and who knows where he’d be now.
Instead, Barnhart remained AD and has enjoyed what still would go down as a successful tenure, so it’s easy to see why he feels so indebted to Stoops.
The irony in keeping Stoops another year is that there’s a scenario where UK has to actually pay more in buyout money for firing him after 2026 than doing it now. That’s because UK will absolutely have to fire Bush Hamdam and bring in a new offensive coordinator, which won’t be cheap when everyone and their grandma knows Stoops is a lame-duck coach.
Case in point: Hamdan’s deal, which has just one year left after this season, calls for him to be paid $1.45 million if fired after 2025. It was essentially a fully guaranteed deal that pays whatever his remaining salary is, so had he been fired after last season, the buyout cost would have been about $2.8 million since his 2025 salary is $1.35 million.
Let’s say Kentucky decides to run things back with Stoops. You’ll probably have to pay the next OC even more than Hamdan and sign him to at least a three-year deal to justify taking a major risk to work under a lame-duck coach like Stoops.
In this scenario, the next OC could get something to the effect of three years, $6 million. If that coach is then fired after 2026 when things go south and the entire staff is let go, the buyout owed to him could be around $3-4 million.
Waiting to fire Stoops after 2026 instead of after this year would save the UK about $6.75 million in buyout money.
However, between the buyout for the OC and the rest of the staff, the buyout owed just to assistants could easily exceed that $6.75 number. After all, defensive coordinator Brad White is on an expiring deal with a salary of $1.5 million. Extending him or paying someone else close to that number means just the next OC and the new deal for a DC could come close to equalling the amount of money UK saves by waiting another season to can Stoops.
That’s not even accounting for the losses in ticket sales and anything Kentucky football-related that brings in money.
Then there’s NIL money. Kentucky football actually got a decent amount of NIL funding for this year’s team, but that will dry up quickly if Stoops is back following a 4-8 or 3-9 season.
We’re talking millions and millions of dollars in losses by actually bringing Stoops back for another run and long-term damage that will set this program back for who knows how long.
Still, it’s Mitch Barnhart we’re talking about. Unless things drastically decline over the next six games in attendance, or both sides reach a buyout agreement in the coming weeks, he’ll likely decide to bring Stoops back, regardless of how much support he gets from donors with buyout money.
Look no further than Barnhart’s comments when talking about Stoops’ job security over the summer, calling 2024’s 4-8 finish a “one-year blip” and suggesting that he’d need to see at least two more similar seasons to consider firing Stoops.
“A one-year blip is not what I would call ‘not sustaining it.’ Now, if we go two or three more, a couple more years, and we’re still not back where we want to be, sure, then you have to have a conversation about, what are we trying to get to here?” Barnhart told Jon Hale of the Lexington Herald-Leader. “And how do we do that? But he’s absolutely engaged with our guys. Staff is over there, working hard at it, and we’ve got a good group of guys coming in.”
So yeah, things would need to get a lot worse fast if he’s going to fire Stoops.
Which brings me to my next point. Kentucky actually has a shot to win several games down the stretch to further cement Barnhart’s belief that things could get better.
Kentucky will probably lose to Tennessee in Week 9, though this rivalry has been very close in games played at Kroger Field recently.
And because Tennessee fans travel well, especially for a relatively easy drive to Lexington, look for the game to have another good fan showing, which is what Barnhart wants to see in order to justify keeping Stoops.
After that, Kentucky plays on the road against an Auburn team that, like the Wildcats, is also outstanding when it comes to inventing new ways to lose games. This may be another game where both teams try to hand it to the other. The Tigers also just lost their starting center to a season-ending injury, and we know how well this Kentucky defense has been, especially in the trenches. That will be a very winnable road game for the Cats.
And if Auburn loses at Arkansas this week, there’s a very good chance that head coach Hugh Freeze is fired ahead of the Week 10 matchup with Kentucky.
Speaking of lame-duck coaches, Week 10 will see Florida come to Kroger Field without head coach Billy Napier, who was just fired. Kentucky has had some very important wins over the Gators under Stoops, and this game comes after Florida’s annual rivalry battle with Georgia. Assuming that’s a loss, Kentucky will likely host a deflated Gators team just wanting the season to end already.
Then the Cats get an FCS game in Week 11 vs. a Tennessee Tech team that, despite having a great season thus far, is still an FCS team facing an SEC team on the road. Still, if somehow Kentucky were to lose this game, it should be an ironic ending for Stoops’ tenure in Lexington, which has included several near-losses to FCS schools like EKU (twice) and East Tennessee State.
So, at worst, Kentucky should be 3-7 going into the final two games, which will likely be blowout losses at Vanderbilt and at Louisville, setting the stage for a 3-9 finish. But given how close Kentucky has been in losses to ranked Texas and Ole Miss teams, it’s not out of the question that the Cats steal 1-2 games from Florida and Auburn.
A 4-8 or 5-7 finish would assuredly be all the ammo Barnhart needs to run this back in 2026. And no, I don’t expect another college program like Virginia Tech to hire Stoops and bail Barnhart out like Arkansas did with Calipari.
One other note: Because there have been so many firings already with schools like Florida, Penn State, Arkansas, Oklahoma State, and UCLA, while Auburn, Wisconsin, and even Florida State could also join the mix, Kentucky desperately needs to act now to avoid getting left in the dust when it comes to head-coaching candidates. By waiting until the final weeks of the season to decide on Stoops while many candidates come off the board, Barnhart could use that as another excuse to keep Stoops and hope for a better candidate pool in future years.
I’m going to say Kentucky gets an SEC win from the Florida/Auburn group and finishes 4-8. While back-to-back 4-8 finishes should be enough to get Stoops canned, my prediction is Barnhart will remain as conservative as always and ultimately keep his embattled head coach.
And thus, we enter 2026 with Mark Stoops and a new OC to go against a more challenging schedule that now includes nine SEC games. And based on the program’s trajectory, it’s fair to think that next year could be 2-10 bad, as Kentucky effectively becomes what old Kansas football was: Annually winning two or fewer games and going winless vs. teams from power conferences while being among the laughingstocks of college football.
Thanks, Mitch.
