LEXINGTON, Ky. — For the second time in two calendar years, many Kentucky Wildcats fans yearn for the ouster of a major UK coach whose contract terms would seem to make such a move cost prohibitive.

Currently, Kentucky’s football fortunes are in something akin to free fall. The Wildcats have lost 17 of their past 20 games against power-conference foes. UK has lost eight straight and 12 of its past 13 SEC games.

As a result, many Cats backers are pleading for a coaching change. Yet, if UK were to remove Mark Stoops without cause (in other words, for losing) it would owe the Wildcats head football coach a contract buyout of just under $38 million.

This vexing spot is a familiar place for the Big Blue Nation.

In the spring of 2024, after Kentucky men’s basketball had failed to get out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament for a fourth consecutive season, many UK fans were demanding the ouster of John Calipari.

But UK would have then owed Calipari in the vicinity of $34 million if it removed him.

So the university had already announced that Calipari would be returning when the coach got UK off the hook by leaving of his own volition to become boss Hog at Arkansas.

Now, with Kentucky already back in the same position with Stoops as it was with Calipari, many have begun to question how UK can stay away in the future from the constrictions of these massive coaching contract buyouts?

The good news is there is a simple answer that would assure the university never again faces this “mammoth coaching buyout” scenario.

However, the bad news is that keeping Kentucky out of such circumstances in the future would require a course of action many Cats fans would likely find unacceptable.

I have not been as critical of Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart as have others for having UK in the situation of having two major coaches producing declining competitive returns but with contract buyouts that all but make them “unfireable.”

The reason is that, when the contracts with Stoops and Calipari were agreed to, there would have been a massive fan backlash in real time if Kentucky had not done all it could to keep the coaches.

At the time the university created the Calipari buyout with a contract extension in 2019, it was responding to reports UCLA was pursuing the then-Kentucky coach.

In 2019, the Wildcats were only four seasons removed from what had been Calipari’s fourth Final Four trip at UK. Over the prior four seasons, the Cats had reached the NCAA Tournament round of 16 three times and the round of eight twice.

At that point, Calipari was still producing teams that were “Kentucky good.”

The Stoops contract buyout

On Monday, after a meeting of the Champions Blue LLC board of governors — the body that now oversees UK athletics — Barnhart explained in response to a reporter’s question why Kentucky agreed to give Stoops such a generous contract buyout, including the rare provision that it must be paid in full within 60 days of termination.

Essentially, the UK AD said you had to understand the timing of the 2022 negotiations.

In 2021, Kentucky had just completed its second 10-3 season in four years. This was heady stuff for a football program that had only twice previously in its entire history reached double-digit wins in a season.

UK had started the 2022 season 4-0 and was ranked No. 7 in the AP Top 25. Meanwhile, Stoops’ name was being linked in reports from credible media outlets with coaching vacancies at more traditionally football-adept universities such as Nebraska and Auburn.

“There was a lot of talk around our program ... and there was a large group of folks (who) wanted us to make sure we didn’t lose a guy that had been so beneficial to our program,” Barnhart said.

In retrospect, the obvious way to stay out of what now looks like a “bad contract” with Stoops would have been to risk letting the coach move on in 2022.

Yet, contrary to what fan bases say when frustrated, I don’t think most college sports fans would be accepting of their school just letting its winning coaches walk.

By its actions, the UK administration showed it feared losing successful coaches when they were popular more than it did ending up in the frustrating contract dead ends it wound up in with Calipari and is now in with Stoops.

Had Kentucky allowed Stoops to exit in 2022 — the same season in which he became UK’s all-time football coaching wins leader — the narrative would have been that “the same school that could not keep Bear Bryant in the 1950s just let its most successful head man since the Bear get away, too.”

If that had gone down in 2022, The Long-Suffering UK Football Fans would have never forgiven Barnhart.

That reality is why I at least understand how the UK administration has ended up in a second straight “buyout trap” with a prominent head coach.

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