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Kentucky Football 2025: Mark Stoops’ Last Stand

Mark Haines on June 27, 2025

What happens when a coach with a $37.5 million buyout lands on one of college football’s hottest seats?

After a disastrous 4-8 season that snapped Kentucky’s eight-year bowl streak, the longest-tenured coach in the SEC finds himself on the hot seat. The Wildcats managed just one SEC victory in 2024. They averaged a league-worst 308.5 yards per game offensively. They finished with the program’s worst record since Stoops’ inaugural season in 2013.

The pressure couldn’t be more explicit.

As one anonymous SEC coach told Athlon Sports, “This is a make-or-break year for the future of this program. He’s got a very friendly contract that makes him hard to fire, but right now, it’s hard to look at the overall roster here and think they’re keeping pace with programs like Vanderbilt and South Carolina, who changed with the times.”

Another losing season would almost certainly end Stoops’ tenure, regardless of his contract extension, which runs through 2031, with a buyout approaching $37.5 million.

The Quarterback Gamble That Changes Everything

Everything about Kentucky’s 2025 season hinges on one player.

Zach Calzada arrives from Incarnate Word as Kentucky’s most experienced option after completing 65% of his passes for 3,791 yards, 35 touchdowns, and just nine interceptions in 2024. His journey back to the SEC represents both promise and risk for a program desperate for stability at the position.

Here’s what makes Calzada intriguing:

SEC pedigree from his memorable 2021 performance at Texas A&M
Threw for 285 yards and three touchdowns in a stunning 41-38 upset of top-ranked Alabama
Earned SEC Offensive Player of the Week honors for that performance
Brings leadership and mobility to an offense that ranked 119th nationally in scoring

“He’s battle-tested,” offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan said of Calzada. “He’s experienced the highs and the lows. This league is hard, but so is Zach.”

The 24-year-old quarterback’s ability to extend plays and avoid sacks could prove crucial behind an offensive line that allowed 2.1 sacks per game in 2024.

Complete Roster Reconstruction Through the Portal

Kentucky’s offseason approach bordered on desperation.

The Wildcats brought in 26 transfer portal additions while losing 29 players, fundamentally reshaping a roster that managed just 20.6 points per game in 2024. Only 40 players from last year’s team return. That’s a retention rate of just 47 percent.

The most dramatic changes occurred at these positions:

Wide receiver: Added five scholarship transfers and five high school signees while retaining only three players from 2024
Offensive line: Brought in Alex Wollschlaeger (Bowling Green), Cameron Jones (James Madison), and Shiyazh Pete (New Mexico State)
Defense: Added David Gusta (Washington State), Mi’Quise Humphrey-Grace (South Dakota), and Lorenzo Cowan (USC)

Key receiver additions include:

Kendrick Law from Alabama
Tory Stellato from Clemson
Ashton Cozart from SMU/Oregon

“We set that precedent right from the beginning,” Stoops said about integrating the new additions. “We always want to be player-led and player-led in the accountability phase, and these guys are working at it.”

The Schedule From Hell Awaits

Want to know why Vegas has Kentucky’s win total at just 4.5 games?

The Wildcats face one of the most challenging schedules in college football. They’ll host Ole Miss, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida at Kroger Field. All four opponents will likely be ranked. Road games await at South Carolina, Georgia, Auburn, Vanderbilt, and rival Louisville.

According to Sports Illustrated’s analysis: “Realistically, all nine of these teams could be ranked this season, making this one of the toughest schedules Coach Stoops will have played during his time in Lexington.”

The numbers tell the story:

Vegas win total: 4.5 games at FanDuel, 5.5 at DraftKings
Early spread projections show Kentucky favored in only four games
Non-conference games against Toledo, Eastern Michigan, and Tennessee Tech provide the only realistic early victories

The SEC gauntlet begins immediately after.

Cultural Reset and Leadership Challenges

How do you build team chemistry when 31 new players walk through the door?

Stoops launched the “Yearbook” program to help players learn each other’s names and conducted home visits to foster personal bonds. This cultural emphasis represents a direct response to the challenge of integrating so many new faces while maintaining standards.

“I love this place. I’ve been here 12 years, going on 13, and I promise you — I’ll be honest with you, I’m emotional right now talking about it because my ass wants to get back to the office and get to work to make this team better,” Stoops told KSR in March.

The emotional weight of the situation is obvious.

The coaching staff remains largely intact, providing continuity during turbulent times:

Kevin Barbay joined as an offensive analyst to assist Hamdan
Brad Lambert was hired to work with the secondary
Focus on accountability and player-led leadership continues

Special Teams Excellence Remains

Kentucky’s special teams unit represents one of the few bright spots.

Punter Aidan Laros returns after earning All-SEC second-team honors. Kicker Alex Raynor brings back elite accuracy following a 93.8 percent field goal and 96.3 percent extra point conversion rate in 2024. These specialists provide the “hidden yardage” advantages that could prove decisive in close games.

The return game lost Barion Brown’s explosive ability, but the Wildcats have prioritized special teams as a way to create scoring opportunities when the offense stalls.

The Buyout Factor Creates an Unusual Dynamic

Stoops’ massive contract extension creates a complex situation.

The $37.5 million buyout makes firing him financially burdensome for Kentucky, providing some insulation despite fan frustration following back-to-back losing seasons. However, the pressure from fans and administration continues to mount.

Here’s what the numbers show:

Season ticket sales dropped 12.7 percent
Only a few hundred fans attended the spring game
Clear disconnect between fanbase and program leadership

This tension between fiscal reality and performance expectations creates an unusual situation where Stoops has job security despite on-field failures.

What Success Actually Looks Like in 2025

Bowl eligibility represents the absolute minimum requirement.

Most analysts project that Kentucky will finish with four to five wins. Six victories would require significant improvement and several upsets. The best-case scenario involves Calzada playing efficiently, the offensive line gelling quickly, and at least one transfer receiver emerging as a playmaker.

As Sports Illustrated observed: “If Stoops gets this team to a bowl game, it will be the best job he has done in a season during his time at Kentucky.”

The keys to exceeding expectations:

Reduce turnovers from 1.9 per game average in 2024
Improve red zone efficiency from 43 percent touchdown rate
Generate consistent defensive pressure after losing key pass rushers
Win close games through special teams excellence

The Bottom Line: Prove It or Lose It

Kentucky football stands at a crossroads.

Stoops has spent 12 seasons building the Wildcats from SEC doormat to occasional contender, achieving unprecedented consistency with eight consecutive bowl appearances from 2016-2023. Recent regression has erased much of that goodwill and placed his future in jeopardy.

The 2025 season will determine whether Kentucky’s recent success was sustainable progress or merely a brief peak that will return to historical norms.

For Mark Stoops, 2025 isn’t just another season in Lexington—it’s his final audition.

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The Not-So-Sweet Survival Guide: College Football’s Week 11 Hot Seat Rankings

Mark Haines on November 5, 2024

It’s college football’s week 11 – that special time of year when athletic directors start pricing golden parachutes. At Arkansas, Sam Pittman (#1) watches Jaxson Dart throw for 515 yards against his defense and wonders if those moving trucks outside his office are just passing through . In Birmingham, Trent Dilfer (#2) has mastered the art of making UAB worse than “freakin’ Alabama,” while Temple’s Stan Drayton (#3) costs more per loss than some entire Group of Five coaching staffs.

Our Hot Seat Rankings start with these 10:

1. Sam Pittman – Arkansas

In the statistical carnage that was Ole Miss’s 63-31 dismantling of Arkansas, two numbers stood out like neon signs above a desperate Vegas casino: 515 and 6. That’s how many yards and touchdowns Jaxson Dart threw without a single interception—a feat no SEC quarterback had ever managed. His favorite target, Jordan Watkins, turned eight catches into 254 yards and five touchdowns, the efficiency that makes defensive coordinators contemplate career changes.

Lane Kiffin, college football’s resident chaos merchant, couldn’t resist twisting the knife with a post-game quip about airport tarmacs—a particularly cruel jab given that Sam Pittman might soon be familiar with them himself. In the merciless accounting of college football, Pittman’s seat isn’t just hot; it is approaching nuclear fusion.

2. Trent Dilfer – UAB

On Saturday, UAB’s Kam Shanks and Jalen Kitna shattered school records in a 59-21 victory over Tulsa that felt less like a breakthrough and more like a beautiful funeral. The numbers were staggering: Shanks’s 311 all-purpose yards, Kitna’s 404 passing yards, and six touchdowns—the statistics that usually save coaching careers. But in Birmingham, where Trent Dilfer has managed to transform a conference champion into a 2-6 cautionary tale, even victory feels like defeat.

The real story isn’t in Saturday’s box score—it’s in Dilfer’s infamous “It’s not like this is freakin’ Alabama” quip, the kind of comment that makes boosters reach for their checkbooks and their phones simultaneously. In less than two years, he’s taken Bill Clark’s ascending program—six straight winning seasons, two conference titles—and performed the sort of dismantling usually reserved for failed hedge funds or terminated football programs, something Birmingham knows too well.

The irony? Dilfer’s still collecting his $1.3 million salary while his team plays like they’re working for minimum wage against real competition. In the economics of college football, that’s the kind of inefficiency that doesn’t survive long—even with Mark Ingram in charge.

3. Stan Drayton – Temple

In the economics of college football, Temple University has managed to create a case study in how not to allocate resources. They’re paying Stan Drayton—a career running backs coach—$2.5 million annually to perform heart surgery. At the same time, Florida Atlantic handed Tom Herman the same job for the price of a luxury sedan. It’s the kind of financial decision that would have kept the late Lew Katz up at night, pacing his private jet’s cabin, checkbook in hand.

The cruel mathematics of Temple’s predicament reveals itself in two numbers: 55-0, the score by which SMU dismantled the Owls on national television, and $7.5 million, the remaining cost of Drayton’s contract. In a different era, when Temple had its own version of a Wall Street activist investor in Katz, this market inefficiency would have been corrected by Monday morning. But his son Drew, now on the Board of Trustees, treats the family fortune like a conservative bond portfolio—safe, steady, and utterly useless for the kind of radical intervention Temple football requires.

The tragedy isn’t just in losing—everyone loves Drayton the Man. It’s watching a university bet its football future on a position coach while having no hedge against failure. In North Philadelphia, where campus security costs outweigh football aspirations, they’re learning that love doesn’t show up in the win column.

4. Billy Napier – Florida

For three hours and fifty-six minutes on Saturday, Billy Napier lived in an alternate universe where Florida football still mattered. His Gators, held together with duct tape and populated partly by what appeared to be a local moving crew (they’d shown up early, anticipating a blowout), had somehow matched the mighty Georgia Bulldogs punch for punch. The score sat at 20-20, and Napier could almost feel his seat temperature dropping from nuclear to merely scalding.

But Georgia, like a cat toying with an injured mouse, was merely setting up the punchline. Carson Beck had thrown three interceptions, seemingly playing to Florida’s level, until you realized it was all part of the script. In four brutal minutes, the Bulldogs engineered a 75-yard drive, snatched an interception, and scored again—transforming what could have been Napier’s career-saving upset into just another SEC cautionary tale.

The cruelest part? Those last four minutes proved that the previous 56 had been merely Georgia’s idea of performance art, a masterclass in giving false hope to the doomed.

5. Dave Aranda – Baylor

At Baylor, Dave Aranda’s job security has behaved like a volatile tech stock—swooning early, rebounding late, and keeping traders guessing. After opening 2-4 with wins against only Air Force and something called Tarleton State, Aranda’s position looked about as secure as a crypto wallet password. But in the fluid market of college football coaching, even the most bearish positions can reverse course.

Two consecutive wins against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State have performed the kind of market correction usually reserved for Federal Reserve announcements. The remaining schedule—TCU, West Virginia, Houston, and Kansas, none currently above .500—looks less like a gauntlet and more like a carefully curated path to bowl eligibility. “Six wins and he’s back,” whispered one industry insider, with the kind of certainty usually reserved for insider trading tips.

The irony? Aranda, the defensive genius who once commanded premium value in the coaching marketplace, finds his future tied to the most basic of metrics: win six games or clean out your office. In Waco, where faith and football intersect with ten-figure endowments, salvation comes from a .500 record.

6. Sonny Cumbie – Louisiana Tech

In Huntsville, Texas, on a Tuesday night that felt more like a Samuel Beckett play than a football game, Sonny Cumbie’s Louisiana Tech team managed to lose 9-3 while winning almost every statistical category that matters. They outgained Sam Houston 312-268, held a rushing attack that averaged 200 yards per game to just 105, and forced two turnovers. By any rational measure, they should have won. But college football, like tragedy, follows its peculiar logic.

The box score reads like a hedge fund’s risk assessment report gone wrong: four turnovers, two turnovers on downs, and three points to show for it all. Twice, the Bulldogs penetrated within the 5-yard line in the fourth quarter alone, finding new and creative ways to self-destruct each time. This kind of performance makes athletic directors update their coaching search firms’ contact information.

The cruel irony? Cumbie’s defense played well enough to win a conference championship game. Instead, they watched their offense turn the red zone into a haunted house, fumbling away what little hope remained of salvaging their season. At 3-5, with Jacksonville State looming, Cumbie finds himself selling the one commodity no one in college football wants to buy: moral victories.

7. Joe Moorhead – Akron

Joe Moorhead’s return to Akron had all the elements of a classic homecoming story—the prodigal coordinator returns, older and wiser, ready to transform his former program. It was the kind of narrative Hollywood makes movies about. Instead, it’s become a documentary about entropy: two straight 2-10 seasons, with 2023 following the same inexorable path toward dysfunction.

Saturday’s 41-30 loss to Buffalo reads like a physics problem where all the equations work backwards. The Zips outgained Buffalo 452-390, dominated through the air 378-210, and won the third-down battle 43% to 23%. Ben Finley threw for 378 yards and four touchdowns—numbers that in any rational universe translate to victory. But Akron, like a time traveler who can only arrive after the critical moments have passed, spotted Buffalo a 38-7 lead before remembering how to play football.

The cruel irony? Moorhead was supposed to be the sure thing—the experienced head coach, the familiar face, the proven winner. Instead, he’s become living proof that in college football, like quantum mechanics, observation changes the outcome. In Akron, where they’ve spent decades trying to solve the equation of relevance, they’re learning that even the smartest professors sometimes fail the final exam.

8. Mark Stoops – Kentucky

Mark Stoops has achieved something that should be impossible in the physical universe of college football: becoming Kentucky’s all-time winningest coach (73 victories) while simultaneously watching his support evaporate like bourbon at a tailgate. It’s the kind of contradiction that makes quantum physicists scratch their heads—how can someone be the most successful coach in school history and a source of fan rebellion?

The 2024 season opened like a Southern Gothic novel—high expectations, veteran talent, and a schedule that read like a list of ancient curses. By week two against South Carolina, the plot had turned dark: the offensive line collapsed like a condemned building, and fans who’d once praised Stoops’ program building started treating his flirtation with Texas A&M like a betrayal in a Faulkner story.

The cruel irony? In a state where basketball championships are measured like bourbon vintages, Stoops made football matter. He turned seven straight bowl games into an expectation rather than a miracle. As whispers suggest he might walk away, Kentucky faces a terrifying question: What if their greatest football coach ever was also their last chance at sustained relevance? In Lexington, where basketball season can’t start soon enough, they learn that success and satisfaction rarely arrive in the same bottle.

9. Hugh Freeze – Auburn

In the Gothic horror story that is Auburn football, Hugh Freeze has managed to accomplish something previously thought impossible: making Jordan-Hare Stadium about as intimidating as a petting zoo. The latest chapter? A 17-7 loss to Vanderbilt that read less like a football game and more like an exorcism gone wrong—except the demons won.

The numbers tell a story of decay that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud: 4-10 against SEC opponents since his arrival, an offense that treats the end zone like it’s radioactive, and a fan base discovering that their traditional autumn rituals of victory have been replaced by something far more sinister: mediocrity. They’re not just losing; they’re losing to Vanderbilt at home, the kind of plot twist that makes Stephen King seem unimaginative.

The cruel irony? After enduring what they called “the worst coach in SEC history, ” Auburn hired Freeze to be their savior.” Now, as Freeze watches his quarterback Payton Thorne perform weekly reenactments of college football’s greatest disasters while Jarquez Hunter stands idle on the sideline, they learn a painful lesson: sometimes the cure can feel worse than the disease. On the Plains, where “War Eagle” once struck fear into visitors, they discover that not all resurrection stories have happy endings.

10. Lincoln Riley – USC

Lincoln Riley’s USC experiment has begun to resemble a Silicon Valley startup in freefall—the kind where the CEO starts banning journalists, restricting information flow, and contemplating whether to return the deposit on the party clown. The numbers tell the story of this implosion: 5-11 in their last 16 games, a stark reversal from the 17-3 start that had USC boosters dreaming of their next Pete Carroll.

Saturday’s 26-21 loss to Washington felt less like a football game and more like a hedge fund’s last trading day. Miller Moss threw three interceptions, each one driving down USC’s stock price a little further. The remaining schedule—Nebraska, UCLA, Notre Dame—looms like a series of margin calls. A bowl game, once considered a foregone conclusion in the Riley era, now feels about as sure as a cryptocurrency recovery.

The tragedy isn’t just in the losing—it’s in watching Riley transform from offensive genius to besieged executive. We expect his next move to come straight from his Oklahoma playbook: painting the windows black in Heritage Hall and the McKay Center. In L.A., where style points count double, Riley’s program has become something worse than unsuccessful: It’s become uncool.

Check out our complete list here. Share your thoughts here.

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