'I just need to put my head down and get our team better': Mark Stoops discusses Kentucky football at SEC Spring Meetings

Mark Stoops — and the Kentucky football program at-large — has kept a low profile ever since finishing off a 4-8 campaign in 2024. That certainly seems by design. We were not expecting the current dean of SEC head football coaches to do much media at SEC Spring Meetings two weeks ago at the Sandestin Hilton.

However, Stoops did find time to do one radio hit.

The 57-year-old head coach sat down with Peter Burns, Chris Doering, and Jacob Hester for a 10-minute interview to discuss a multitude of topics. That radio hit was aired on Tuesday’s episode of “SEC This Morning” on SiriusXM as Kentucky football was all of a sudden a major topic of interest following Vince Marrow’s departure for Louisville.

This quote stood out even though it occurred weeks before Marrow officially left the program.

“Sometimes things just happen and we have to adapt to them,” said Stoops. “I think for us we’re just kind of holding onto things. Trying to make sure we make the best decisions.”

That was in reference to a question about the future of college football with revenue-sharing and another expanded playoff around the corner, but also felt related to what has been happening with the program over the last four-plus seasons. Stoops touched on multiple big-picture topics with the SEC SiriusXM crew for the first time since spring practice ended.

This is what the leader of Kentucky football had to say.

Mark Stoops is not worried about CFP expansion (or the conference schedule model)

The No. 1 offseason topic surrounding college football is centered around what is going to happen with the College Football Playoff in 2026 when expansion arrives. It looks like we are heading to a 16-team format with automatic bids involved in the seeding process. There is the 5+11 model with each conference champion receiving an automatatic bid and the 4+4+2+2+1 model with 13 auto bids but eight of those going to the SEC and Big Ten. These have been discussed and covered ad nauseam. The 5+11 model currently has some traction but the kicker with each involves the rest of college football wanting the SEC to play nine conference games.

Will that happen? That is something we should find out over the summer. Mark Stoops is currently not real worried about any of the big-picture issues that the SEC is currently dealing with in football.

“I have a long way to go to get to the AQs, right? For myself, that is really not that pertinent to me. It’s not that important right now,” Stoops explained. “I just need to put my head down and get our team better. That’s really what I’m concentrating on.”

Stoops is worried about getting his own house in order. The head coach did go on record to state the SEC did not have a vote on what to via the future scheduling model.

Mark Stoops addresses the transfer portal and how the Kentucky is attempting to correct its course

Last year was a bad one for the Kentucky football program. Mark Stoops admitted during the rough campaign that the program needed a reboot and reset. However, the head coach wanted to keep coaching continuity. That means the changes had come via the roster. UK heavily used two-way portal movement to drastically change the look of the team in Lexington.

A huge part of SEC Meetings was discussion around the future of the transfer portal. Coaches in the league are pushing for one window but do not want that window occurring after the spring semester in May or June. There is a huge push to keep the portal in the winter so teams can have pretty much their entire team on campus to go through winter workouts and team-building exercises during the spring semester.

Stoops did not officially give a stance on where he would like the new portal window to be but explained just how important having this free agency tool is to build a team.

“I think for us getting the calendar right with the transfer portal, there’s so much discussion on that. One or two portals? When is the best time for that portal? We all want to take our team and get it better through the winter and through spring and now the next phase in the summer,” Stoops said. “We’ve gone through that and I really felt good about the winter. I felt good about the portal, I felt good about our team but it’s let’s take it to the next phase.”

The head coach admitted that the Cats need drastic changes after last season. That included tinkering with the roster-building strategy and taking a closer look at everything the program is doing.

“When I had the season that I had, let’s be honest, I have to go in and look at everything. Strip it all down,” explained Stoops. “What are we missing here? Where are we going wrong? What needs to improve? How to do that? That was many, many days, hours, weeks of that.”

“You gotta take a good look at yourself and be open to criticism and leave your ego at the door. Take a good hard look at a lot of things. I don’t need to get into the weeds on that but we certainly did.”

That also means creating no headlines. This has been a top goal of the program for months.

“There’s a lot of things. I don’t want to get into a headline today. That’s one thing I want to get out of the summer,” said Stoops.

Addressing the offensive line

The news that Kentucky offensive line coach Eric Wolford received a pay raise and one-year contract extension after his second first season with the program did not go over well in the Big Blue Nation. But Mark Stoops continues to share his strong belief in the Youngstown native.

Wolford was re-hired to rebuild the room after years of suboptimal offensive line recruiting and development. That happened this offseason when Kentucky spent some big money in the portal to find multiple new starters in the trenches. Stoops has again gone on record to state that he feels good about the direction of the Big Blue Wall.

“You better be good upfront or you really don’t have a good chance. I think that’s one area that I’m sure a lot of our fan base wants to improve it, the offensive line position, and we have to do it to give our quarterbacks a chance and your running backs a chance. You better play good upfront,” Stoops said about the offensive line. “So we have a variety of guys there and I don’t need to call out any one person or any transfer or anybody like that.”

“I think as a unit, I’m excited. I know we’re going to improve. I know they’ve worked really hard. We have some better pieces in place.”

Mark Stoops does not want to create headlines but he does believe that the offensive line has been improved this offseason and better play at the line of scrimmage should arrive in 2025.