LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Mark Stoops is no longer warning the fans. He’s not begging for a checkbook out of frustration. He’s done shaking trees to see what money falls off.
Forget all that “pony up” talk. The embattled Kentucky coach is back in the saddle, looking to lead a charge. How many follow remains to be seen.
His usual Monday news conference this week was not business as usual. But he did mean business. It was a remarkable turn if you remember the bruises this team endured in October, and if you remember that Saturday’s opponent, Vanderbilt, is a double-dight favorite fighting for a College Football Playoff spot.
This wasn’t a coach hedging his bets. This was a program manager presenting a donor prospectus wrapped in shoulder pads, an invoice for a product that has, against some odds and all predictions, started humming again.
Three straight wins. An emerging quarterback. A wide receiver who'd play gunner, safety, or referee if you asked him. And a locker room full of young players Stoops can't stop complimenting, or campaigning for.
“Let’s keep the ones the fans want to see,” he said. “Retention is huge.”
We all remember a couple of years back when Stoops said the words “pony up.” The fanbase did backflips. Social media caught fire. UK’s own officials fanned themselves genteelly with their game programs.
Well, guess what?
He said it again Monday. Just not with those words. Not with any slogan. This was less soapbox and more spreadsheet. But here’s the secret of this whole topic. Stoops wasn’t wrong when he said those things in 2023, he just wasn’t winning.
Now, he has an altered landscape (revenue sharing more than NIL) and an altered competitive landscape (winning tends to make people more open to your opinion).
“In 2001, you didn’t want to say, ‘I don’t have any money,’” Stoops said. “But now? Nobody cares … It’s just kind of factual.”
So, no more hinting. No more whispers. Stoops isn’t just coaching football games anymore. He’s running a multi-million dollar personnel operation in cleats. And he’s giving the fans — and, more pointedly, the donors, and his own university — a peek behind the curtain.
He wants money. Not just for five-stars. But for finishers. For the guys who have built this season’s revival, who bleed blue, who keep coming back for treatment, who look at the portal and say, nah, I think I’ll stay.
And he says that with a team going into Nashville this Saturday to face what might be the SEC’s best example of what he is talking about.
Yes, that Vanderbilt.
Forget your old Commodores jokes. This isn’t the try-hard team of well-behaved valedictorians and straight-line punters. This is a 10-point favorite with a legit quarterback in Diego Pavia, who Stoops says makes plays “between him and God,” and a tight end (Eli Stowers) who plays like he was built in a red-zone laboratory.
They’re physical. They’re deep. They’ve won four SEC games. And Stoops has watched the tape enough to know that last year’s loss to Vanderbilt wasn’t a fluke. It was a fumble.
“A penalty at the wrong time, a turnover… and the game’s away from you in a hurry,” he said.
But Stoops and his team have a different feel this year. Not just on the field. In the facility. In the effort. In the locker room chemistry that hasn’t curdled, even in the NIL era where everyone has a price tag and an agent who answers emails with “let me circle back.”
“They like being here,” Stoops said. “They like each other. And it puts a smile on your face.”
Stoops, for much of his career, has coached like a building contractor. On Monday, he was talking like a broker. You half expect him to start his Monday pressers with a QR code and a matching-donation alert. (Somebody write that down. It’s a decent idea.)
But don’t mistake the message. This isn’t some cynical turn. It’s the truth of college football in 2025. You can coach them up all you want, but unless you have the money, you’re just getting them ready for some other school. You’ve got to keep them. And that costs.
So when Stoops talks about retention, he’s talking about the future of the program. About whether the guys who fight through injury, who block like maniacs, who give you everything, whether they’ll be back. And, parenthetically, he’s talking like the guy who will be around to coach them if they are.
“It’s not an excuse. It’s just factual,” he said of his financial digression. “We’re trying to move past it.”
That’s the tone now. No rants. No slogans. No jabs at basketball. Just a look in the camera and a calm voice:
“Here’s what it takes.”
He’s not saying “Pony up” anymore.
He’s just inviting folks to look around the barn. They can do the math.
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