It didn’t take long for the question to be posed to Mark Stoops at his appearance at SEC Media Days in Dallas on Thursday.
Stoops was asked about the rumors last November that he had been offered the Texas A&M job after the Aggies fired Jimbo Fisher — and if Stoops had been close to accepting the job. Stoops said only that Texas A&M had pursued him “aggressively.”
“I was pursued pretty aggressively by them and we’ll just leave it at that out of respect for everybody involved,” Stoops demurred. “There’s a lot of people, over the years, a lot of interactions between people. But it was very brief. I was pursued (but) I had a job to do.”
Texas A&M ultimately hired Duke coach Mike Elko. Stoops stayed in Lexington where he’s set to begin his 12th season as Wildcats coach. With Nick Saban’s retirement in January, that makes Stoops the dean of SEC coaches.
Stoops went on praise the level of coaching talent in the SEC. Since the league’s run of dominance began with Florida crushing Ohio State in the 2006 BCS National Championship Game, the Gators, LSU, Alabama, Auburn and Georgia have all gone on to win national championships. Four of those schools won two titles; Alabama won six under Saban.
Following Saban’s retirement, Georgia’s Kirby Smart is now the only active SEC coach to have won a national title, though new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer played for one last season at Washington. LSU’s Brian Kelly did so in 2012 at Notre Dame.
Other SEC head coaches were coordinators for teams that won national championships, including Oklahoma’s Brent Venables, Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin and Texas’ Steve Sarkisian.
Stoops, by far the longest-tenured coach in Kentucky football history, noted that there had only been 19 coaches in the history of the SEC that had stayed 12 years at a program.
“I’m proud to be a member of that group,” Stoops said earnestly. “I’ve been grinding at Kentucky for a long time and am very proud of that and want to continue that. And again, we want more, but that’s not nothing. The SEC’s been around a very long time and we’ve got a lot of very good football coaches.”
Stoops is one of them. He’s gone 73-65 as Kentucky’s coach and has led to the Wildcats to eight consecutive bowl games, including two Citrus Bowl victories (vs. Penn State and Iowa). In 2018, he earned SEC Coach of the Year honors after leading Kentucky to its first 10-win season since 1977.
Kentucky opens the 2024 season in primetime August 31 against Southern Miss at Kroger Field. Kickoff is set for 7:45 p.m. ET. The game will be televised by SEC Network.