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Harvey Dent (yes, Two-Face from Batman) has sound advice for college coaches and Mark Stoops

On3 imageby: Adam Stratton10/05/25AdamStrattonKSR
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Image via The Dark Knight

Let’s get this out of the way first: The Dark Knight is the best superhero movie ever made. This isn’t even controversial, right? Don’t tell me you’re more of a Marvel fan. Avengers: End Game? Please. That is just sappy. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Marketing gimmick. People will be dressing as Heath Ledger’s Joker for Halloween for all eternity. But, more to the point, the movie’s other villain, Harvey Dent (AKA Two-Face), has a poignant message that should resonate with all college coaches, specifically Kentucky’s Mark Stoops at the moment.

The profession of college coaching can be absolutely brutal. It may not be quite as bad as the life of an NBA coach, where people like former Kentucky assistant Dwane Casey can win Coach of the Year only to be rewarded by their franchise with a prompt firing. But still, college athletics lives by the “What have you done for me lately?” creed, perhaps to a fault. It makes it tough for anyone to find a long-term home.

This is where Harvey Dent’s sage words come in. In one of the most famous lines from The Dark Knight, Dent, the admirable district attorney before his transformation into the villainous Two-Face, explains, “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Or, to tweak this in advice so that it applies to coaching, “You either retire a hero, or coach long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

This is certainly true for Mark Stoops.

Stoops’ swift fall from the rooftop

Just a few short years ago, there was a genuine debate about whether or not Stoops, the only coach to lead Kentucky to two 10-win seasons, deserves a statue on campus. He arguably has had more success than anyone not named Bear Bryant as Kentucky’s football coach in program history.

Stoops could have retired (or bolted to Texas A&M in the middle of the night), and while Big Blue Nation may have been caught off guard, he could have returned to Kroger Field one day on a golden chariot hoisted by former players and fans alike. He will still likely get that deserving homecoming one day, but that spectacle seems like a far-fetched superhero movie right now.

Blame NIL, the transfer portal, a few recruiting whiffs, or whatever you want, but something changed in the last couple of years. This is no place to explore the why behind the fall, only to say something bad pushed Stoops out of a window, and Batman is nowhere around to catch him.

Stoops’ heel-digging isn’t helping matters, either. Sure, what is he supposed to say in a post-game interview when asked if he requested a buyout? “Yeah, I wanted out of this place.” Of course not. But the combination of team turmoil, beloved coaches leaving, and eerily quiet offseasons is not exactly padding the landing of the dreadful on-field results of the last two years.

Stoops isn’t the first and won’t be the last

Harvey Dent’s words also applied to another prominent Kentucky coach: John Vincent Calipari. He could have retired from Kentucky a hero after about 10 years on the job, but instead, saw himself turn into a villain. One wearing a hideous red costume, no less. If it can happen to a National Championship-winning, Hall of Fame coach, it can happen to anyone.

For better or worse, it looks like Stoops will be Kentucky football’s Harvey Dent for a while; the one-time do-no-wrong toast of the town who fell victim to a catastrophe and turned, well, highly unfavorable. Like Two-Face’s coin, Stoops’ future fate is up in the air, as he has made it clear he isn’t going anywhere and will seek to revive his reputation in Lexington. Besides, even Bruce Wayne couldn’t afford his buyout.

For everyone’s sake, let’s hope there’s still good in Mark Stoops and he can return to the hero status of yesteryear. Let’s hope that the coin lands face up so that Stoops can one day retire from Kentucky a hero, and not go further down the same path that Harvey Dent ventured. The last thing anyone wants is for him to go full-blown Joker, whether that be Heath Ledger or former Coach Phillips.

To be clear, this is no actual coin toss; no game of chance. Stoops has a Suicide Squad-caliber mission in front of him that he must conquer if he’s going to flip the narrative. But at heart, his origin story is that of a scrappy kid from Youngstown, and he isn’t going down without a fight.

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2025-10-19