Josh Pate believes Mark Stoops has the best job in college football: "That guy figured it out."

On paper, Kentucky being the best job in college football sounds like a compliment. A better job than, say, Georgia or Ohio State or Texas? Better than Oregon, Penn State or Miami (FL)? Things must be going really well in Lexington, right?

Well, that wasn’t Josh Pate’s point when he was asked the question on The Colin Cowherd Podcast. His real answer when considering actual title contenders is Georgia, but, “if I don’t want to win a title,” it’s Kentucky.

Why? Mark Stoops and his dream setup with the Wildcats. In short, he gets all of the SEC resources and spotlight with none of the serious SEC expectations. He’s able to coast to seven wins every year and get paid like a top-10 coach in the country. Who wouldn’t want that?

“You’ll think I’m joking with you, but Kentucky football would be the job I’d want to take,” Pate told Cowherd. “Mark Stoops makes close to $10 million per year, and the goal there is to win seven games. It’s in rural Kentucky, you can be there forever, he’s got a massive buyout, and unlike most of these other guys, you can blend SEC pay scale without the SEC pressure.

“I can’t believe people don’t look at Mark Stoops and say, ‘That guy figured it out.'”

If fired, Kentucky would owe Stoops 75 percent of the remaining salary on his contract that currently runs through 2031, paid out within 60 days of the effective date of termination. That total number is pushing $40 million. Going into the year, the goal was to get back to bowl eligibility after a trainwreck of a 2024 campaign — certainly no pressure to compete for the College Football Playoff or an SEC Championship.

Not bad when you consider Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss), Josh Heupel (Tennessee), James Franklin (Penn State) and Dan Lanning (Oregon) are all making less with CFP expectations. That’s a pretty good gig.

“I think you guys know us well enough. We’ve talked about two things: diplomas in hands and rings on fingers. We’ve won a lot of championships here (as a department),” UK AD Mitch Barnhart said of the current state of Kentucky football. “It’s not a mistake our coaches took us to eight straight bowl games, and we’ve won ten games in two different seasons. This isn’t a team or a coach and a coaching staff that doesn’t know how to win. …

“(But) there’s no mistake about it. We are supremely focused on finding wins. This isn’t about just surviving and being able to make sure that all the finances work for us.”

Kentucky is 2-1 going into its first bye week with a road trip to South Carolina and four straight ranked opponents coming up in October and going into November with Tennessee Tech the only gimme left on the schedule. Gotta be able to find six total wins somewhere — a benchmark everyone else in college football would kill for.