On November 27, 2012, Mitch Barnhart made one of, if not the best hire in his time at Kentucky by bringing in Florida State defensive coordinator, Mark Stoops, as the Wildcats' next head coach. It was love from the start. Stoops laid out a blueprint to recruit and develop players and bring Kentucky out of the dungeon of SEC football. The big blue nation responded by showing up 50,000 strong to the 2013 spring game. Fast forward 11 years, and now the winningnest head coach in program history is on his way out the door.
Following a thrilling 38-31 victory over No. 10 Louisville, reports started to fly connecting Stoops to the open position in College Station. As the day went went on, it became more clear that these reports actually had substance and were not just white noise. By the end of the night, all signals pointed towards Stoops to Aggieland.
With two 10-win seasons and eight consecutive bowl games, the success under Coach Stoops is unparalleled at Kentucky. Things started to change after Kentucky's 5-0 start, however. The Wildcats went into Athens, Georgia for a game with No. 1 Georgia, expecting to put up a fight. As we know, that didn't happen. We then got the infamous "pony up" speech that may have been the beginning of the end of Stoops' time in Lexington. Some of the fanbase began to sour on him, and the match made in heaven began to sour. I have zero intel if that is what caused this, but one can infer that had to hurt on both sides.
At the end of the day, Mark Stoops did things that weren't thinkable at Kentucky. Were there frustrating times? Absolutely. With that, don't forget the amazing moments from the past decade. But it seems like a new era is on the horizon for the Kentucky football program. Who will lead it? Who else leaves? That's yet to be determined, but let's appreciate the era we're now coming out of. As this unfolds throughout the night, I'd just like to thank Coach Stoops for everything he's done with this program. It's undisputedly better than how he inherited it.