Mark Stoops on the hot seat? It's "warm, but not especially."

Mark Stoops is coming off a 4-8 season at Kentucky, his worst since the 2-12 finish in his 2013 debut with the Wildcats — and that’s with obvious slippage leading up to 2024. Mitch Barnhart would also have to find the money for the second-largest buyout in college football history by making him go away, should the wheels really fall off in 2025.

That puts the program in a tricky spot, leaving the folks in Lexington no choice but to trust the process. Barnhart says things have “got to get better” and the Wildcats “got to fight and find our way to some more wins,” but ultimately believes in his guy — “Mark is really, really good at fighting through adversity,” he said. The staff is certainly confident UK will return to the bowl standard that put the blue and white in eight consecutive postseasons under Stoops.

How is Kentucky’s situation viewed at the national level? Is there any scenario where things get worse and change is necessary? The Athletic says it’s unlikely — but Stoops is one of six coaches to monitor in the SEC, joining Sam Pittman at Arkansas, Hugh Freeze at Auburn, Billy Napier at Florida, Brian Kelly at LSU and Brent Venables at Oklahoma.

“Stoops is one of the best coaches in UK’s 100-plus seasons of college football,” college football insider Bruce Feldman wrote for The Athletic. “The Wildcats have had only four 10-win seasons, and he’s responsible for two of them. Last year was the first season since 2015 in which the Wildcats didn’t make a bowl game, as they went 4-8 and 1-7 in conference play.

“Getting the offense right has been his biggest challenge here. The optics of losing top recruiter Vince Marrow to archrival Louisville aren’t great, but Kentucky fans hopefully haven’t forgotten how tough this job is or that they hadn’t had even one Top 25 finish in the 28 years before he arrived. On top of that, his buyout is enormous at close to $40 million.”

How would you classify that in a temperature check?

“Warm, but not especially,” he wrote.

Feldman’s intel comes after several national writers weighed in on Kentucky’s coaching situation this summer.

Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated said that the marriage between Stoops and the Wildcats has gotten “stale,” but “his contract provides some insulation.”

“Gifted with a John Calipari Lite contract, Stoops is expensive and hard to fire,” he wrote. “He would have jumped on his own to Texas A&M in 2023, but that move was vetoed at the last minute. If he can find a landing spot, he might try again if this season is a struggle.”

USA Today’s Blake Toppmeyer and John Adams both ranked Stoops in the top five of coaches on the hottest seats in the SEC — the latter putting Kentucky’s leader at No. 2.

“Momentum hasn’t stalled. It’s reversed,” they said of Stoops. “The combination of SEC expansion, elimination of divisions, and big spending by conference peers didn’t do Stoops any favors, either. Perhaps, a new coach would galvanize fundraising for Kentucky football.”

Would things be different if his contract were an easier band-aid to rip off? Who knows — but that’s not the reality for the Wildcats. It sounds like it’s on Stoops to turn this thing around and get back to those highs of 2018 and 2021.