A Surprising Message from Kentucky Football Ahead of the 2025 Season

Finding the right message to inspire the masses is difficult following a disappointing season. That was the task for Mark Stoops and the Kentucky football program at SEC Media Days. More than a week later, I’m still perplexed by what transpired in Atlanta.

Ahead of their stop in Atlanta, we expected culture to be a primary talking point. Kentucky let go of the rope in the second half of the season. Instilling tenacity and resolve into the program felt like low-hanging fruit to lean into ahead of the 2025 campaign. Jordan Lovett was first up to the mic and spoke candidly about culture changes within the program.

“We are trying to change the culture, especially with a whole bunch of new guys coming in. So far we’ve bonded great together,” he said. “Every Wednesday, we do this thing called 4 for 40. A guest speaker comes in and talks about life outside of football, and on the field, just how we can be better people, like in life. So I feel like that’s been going pretty good.”

Okay, that sounds good. Next up, Alex Afari shared a similar sentiment.

“I feel like everybody’s buying in,” said Alex Afari. “You can feel it in the whole facility. Everybody’s bought into our culture, because last year was not standard at all.”

That’s what you need to hear from a football program that is bringing in 50 new players. Much of the focus this offseason has centered around team-building, yet according to others, it isn’t entirely about changing the culture.

The Surprising Twist in Messaging from Kentucky Football

Josh Kattus was the final player to speak with the media. Instead of sharing a similar, albeit more polished message, his response went in the complete opposite direction.

“I don’t think anything changed. We still have the same four core values,” said the Kentucky tight end. “I think there’s maybe a shift in urgency after last season, but same culture, same mindset, we just got to make sure that we’re more intentional about it this season.”

So, nothing changed? It’s not entirely nothing.

As Mark Stoops noted for the umpteenth time, the coaching staff broke down everything that went wrong and created a plan of action to solve those problems. But in the Kentucky head coach’s eyes, that’s also the case after good seasons.

“I think it’s fair for me to address last year, but not dwell on it. Anytime you have a season like that, you better take a good look at yourself. Certainly, we evaluated everything within the program, as we always do, because if you’re coming off a really good season, you have to make sure you’re capitalizing on the things you’re doing well, and maybe continue to exploit those things and get better in areas where you fall short, try to get better,” he said.

“So it’s really no different. I’m okay talking about it, but I don’t want to dwell on it, because again, I’ve stood here before two times after 10-win seasons, which didn’t happen a lot around here, and all I was worried about was the next season.”

Mark Stoops reiterated those four core values in the Main Room — attitude, toughness, discipline and
pride — as something Kentucky needs to “lean back into” to be successful.

Allow me to reiterate that messaging is hard after a 4-8 campaign. However, “nothing has changed” is a surprising message to deliver to Big Blue Nation. If you put the pieces together, what they’re essentially spelling out is that players were the problem. Adding 50 new players is the big change that will fix this program.

Mark Stoops wants the Kentucky football program to return to its hard-nosed identity, one that it got away from in the NIL era when the Wildcats got a poor rate of return from their star players. For this to work, the new guys must buy into those four core values and consistently deliver results on Saturdays. Allow me to borrow another commonly used line from Mark Stoops: “We’ll see.”