LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Mark Stoops didn't wear sunglasses to Monday's news conference, though he might have wanted to. The Kentucky football coach is having minor facial surgery later this week and joked he didn't want to take the podium with a bandaged face.
"I'll still be around Friday (at media day)," he said. "But I'll probably have sunglasses on. I didn't think it would be appropriate to have a media conference with my sunglasses on. I'm not Deion. He's the only one that can do that."
It was a light moment, but what followed was more meaningful — a subtle but deliberate attempt by Stoops to reconnect with a fan base that has grown increasingly distant.
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He never apologized for his now-infamous October 2023 quote — when, in the wake of a blowout loss to Georgia, Stoops told fans to "pony up some more" in the NIL arms race. But on Monday, he reframed the frustration: not as a shot at fans, but as a plea for help and a fight for his program.
But revenue sharing may offer what Stoops sees as a long-overdue reset.
"For the first time, I feel like we're going to be in a position to hopefully be on equal playing ground with everybody," Stoops said Monday. "And that hasn't always happened. I'm not throwing any shade anywhere."
Well, maybe just a little.
But he's right. And for a coach coming off a 2-12 stretch in the SEC and 6-14 overall since that Georgia game, Monday felt less like defiance and more like diplomacy.
"I don't have to feel funny talking about money anymore," he said. "... That's just part of it, right? Part of all college sports. It's been a tough time, but I don't like talking about that because it feels like an excuse. It just is what it is. It's gone, but I do feel like as we move forward with the support of the administration … this year and where we're going in the future, I really feel like we could be put in a position to be on really good ground. I haven't always felt that way, so that excites me."
The work, he insisted, is being done. Fifty new faces on the roster. A bigger, stronger offensive line. A full offseason of player-led accountability. And, for the first time in his 13 years at Kentucky, full participation in summer workouts.
"We had two situations," Stoops said. "A freshman showed up late a couple times. His unit grabbed him and straightened him out."
The message? This is a player-driven team again, and that matters. Stoops acknowledged that team culture fell short last season — even if he resisted calling it "bad."
"I feel like it's never a bad culture," he said. "It's just not to our expectation. When you lose, you look at everything, and everything is on the table. And that's certainly part of it."
He credited longtime strength coach Mark Hill and his staff with rebuilding not just bodies but buy-in. The Wildcats didn't just need to get bigger. They needed to get tougher. More athletic. More accountable. So Stoops turned up the intensity.
Live tackling returned to spring practice. Critical-goal line situations were emphasized. And this preseason, he said, there will be no easing off the throttle.
"I can't pull back," Stoops said. "We have enough depth. We have enough bodies. We've got to go, and we've got to be physical in camp."
That toughness, he hopes, translates. The failures of last season, particularly short-yardage collapses, still gnaw at him. But what excites him more than revenge is a reset.
"The heck with what happened last year," he said, referencing the influx of new players. "They weren't part of it."
Still, Stoops was. And after the worst 20-game stretch of his Kentucky tenure, maybe this wasn't just a news conference. Maybe it was a soft relaunch. Not quite a mea culpa. But something like a peace offering.
He was talking about his face when he said he'd be around later in the week, just with sunglasses.
But it may as well have been about everything else.
Maybe, finally, he's ready to face all of it — the season, the scrutiny, and whatever comes next.
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