{"id":327753,"date":"2025-12-03T09:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/327753\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T09:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:57:10","slug":"mark-stoops-releases-first-statement-after-being-fired-as-kentucky-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/327753\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Stoops releases first statement after being fired as Kentucky head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just one day after his 13-year tenure at Kentucky<\/a> came to an end, head coach Mark Stoops<\/a> has released a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo all of my former players, coaches, staffers, and the Big Blue Nation, from the bottom of my heart, thank you,\u201d Stoops wrote. \u201cCoaching at Kentucky the last 13 years has been one of the greatest honors of my life. I\u2019ve felt your support, your pride, and your love every single day. Kentucky has become my home and I\u2019ll be forever grateful to have been your head coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Stoops was hired at Kentucky prior to the 2013 season and was the longest-tenured SEC head coach prior to his firing on Monday. Over his 13-year tenure in Lexington, Stoops led the \u2018Cats to an 82-80 (38-68) record with eight consecutive bowl game appearances from 2016-2023. He leaves the position as the winningest head coach in program history.<\/p>\n

After making those eight straight postseason appearances, the last two seasons have been rough for the program. In that span, Kentucky compiled a 9-15 (3-13) record and failed to make a bowl game. It looked as if Stoops may have saved his job with three straight wins over Auburn<\/a>, Florida<\/a>, and Tennessee Tech<\/a> to get to 5-5 this season, but blowout losses to No. 14 Vanderbilt<\/a> (45-17) and Louisville<\/a> (41-0) to end the year gashed all hope of that. <\/p>\n

The program moved fast in naming a new head coach in former Oregon<\/a> offensive coordinator Will Stein<\/a>. Stein, a native of Louisville, KY, had been the Ducks play-caller for the past three seasons. Although he is assuming duties at Kentucky, he will continue to call plays for Oregon throughout the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up in Kentucky and sitting in the stands at UK games as a kid, I could only dream of one day leading the Wildcats,\u201d Stein wrote in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThis is truly a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter what the future holds for Mark Stoops, he will forever be remembered as one of the best (if not the best) head coaches in the history of Kentucky Football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just one day after his 13-year tenure at Kentucky came to an end, head coach Mark Stoops has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[117291,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-327753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-mark-stoops-86-cardinal-mooney","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}