The College Football Rankings were just announced, and it's no surprise that Kentucky is nowhere to be seen. They are 3-6 overall and 1-6 in the SEC, an absolute disaster of a season that has put them at the bottom of many rankings. This is a problem, and the problem within the problem is that Mark Stoops is a top-10 paid coach.
He is currently the 9th highest-paid head coach in all of college football. Out of the top 10 coaches, only three aren't in the College Football Playoffs conversation: Lincoln Riley (USC), Mike Norvel (Florida State), and Mike Stoops. It shouldn't be asinine to say that if you are a top 10 paid coach, you should be producing consistently top 10 finishes year in and year out.
This is the second problem within the problem: Stoops hasn't done it once. Not once has he had a top-10 season, and the time he came the closest was when he had to vacate the 10 wins in 2021. You can't say that for the other two coaches: Riley and Norvel. Sure, Riley hasn't proven it at USC, and his seat is really hot, but at Oklahoma, he never had more than two losses on the season.
It's easy to go: why did Kentucky sign that contract extension with Stoops? That is a legitimate question but it's not currently the right question. That's a looking-back question. Looking forward, the question needs to be; "What is Kentucky going to do about it now?" The answer cannot be more of the same. If Kentucky is going to pay their head football coach as much as they have chosen to, there needs to be different results. A season with 5 wins is not enough. A season with 5 losses is not even enough.
The bottom line: A top-10 coach should be producing top-10 teams, or they need to be gone. The College Football Playoffs announcement is one more reminder of this.