Kentucky reportedly set to fire head coach Mark Stoops after 13 seasons

Back-to-back losing seasons have led to a coaching change at Kentucky.

Longtime head coach Mark Stoops is out at Kentucky, ESPN's Pete Thamel reported Sunday night, after 13 seasons in Lexington. The process is set to formally play out Monday. The Wildcats lost 41-0 to Louisville on Saturday, a week after losing 45-17 at Vanderbilt. Entering the Vandy game, Kentucky was 5-5 and needed one win to make a bowl game.

Following Saturday's loss, Stoops said in his news conference that there was "zero chance" that he would walk away from his job with the Wildcats.

Stoops’ buyout is significant at nearly $40 million after he signed a contract extension in 2022 following a 10-3 season in 2021.

Since then, Kentucky has failed to replicate that success. The Wildcats won seven games in each of the 2022 and 2023 seasons but were 4-8 in 2024. That season snapped an eight-season bowl streak that was easily the longest in school history.

After 2023, Stoops was mentioned as a serious candidate at Texas A&M and even said months later that the Aggies "aggressively" pursued him before hiring Mike Elko. Texas A&M won its first 11 games in 2025 before losing to Texas on Friday night. The Aggies are headed to the College Football Playoff.

Overall, Stoops finishes with a career record of 82-80 with the Wildcats. He took over a program that had three consecutive losing seasons under Joker Phillips and didn’t get the Wildcats back to the postseason until 2016.

Kentucky posted two of its four 10-win seasons under Stoops. The Wildcats went 10-3 in 2018 and won the Citrus Bowl before repeating that performance — right down to a Citrus Bowl win — three years later.

After Mike Gundy's firing earlier this year, only Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, Utah's Kyle Whittingham, Air Force's Troy Calhoun and Clemson's Dabo Swinney had longer tenures than Stoops.

The Wildcats have struggled since the SEC moved away from its East and West divisions, and Kentucky becomes the sixth school in the 16-team SEC to look for a new head coach in 2025. The Wildcats join Arkansas, Florida, LSU, Auburn and Ole Miss after the Rebels were forced to promote defensive coordinator Pete Golding when Lane Kiffin became LSU’s new head coach.

The other three schools hired head coaches from the American Conference on Sunday, as Arkansas hired Memphis’ Ryan Silverfield, Auburn hired South Florida’s Alex Golesh and Florida hired Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, a former Wildcats linebacker. The timing of Kentucky’s decision means it's playing catch-up in the conference as everyone else has already made its future plans.