If you’ve followed Kentucky football long enough, this story should sound familiar. A head coach struggles. The fans grow restless. The results don’t match the investment. And then Mitch Barnhart steps to the microphone to assure everyone that patience is a virtue.
The problem is, we’ve seen this movie before. And we already know how it ends.
The ghost of Joker Phillips
Before there was Mark Stoops, there was Joker Phillips. To tell the full story, we have to back up. Rich Brooks came to Kentucky and rebuilt a program on probation, knocking off a No. 1 LSU team and making the Wildcats respectable along the way. When he retired, instead of a national search, Barnhart opted for the “coach-in-waiting” model, promoting former player and then OC Joker Phillips.
It was a disaster.
After inheriting a 7-6 team, Joker’s tenure went into a nosedive: 6-7, then 5-7, and finally a rock-bottom 2-10. Over three years, he went 13–24 overall and just 4–20 in the SEC. Commonwealth Stadium became a ghost town, which was the real reason he was fired. Remember those numbers though.
A defense built on stubbornness
Yet, even as the program collapsed, Barnhart stood firm. His comments a year before firing Joker should send a chill down the spine of any fan today:
“He’s my football coach, and I intend to ride this thing for the long haul with him and make this thing work,” Barnhart said at the time. “I’m stubborn. I’m going to fight through stuff... My great frustration in the world we live in today is it’s a microwave society. We have determined that everything must happen instantly.”
That is why he wants to give Mark Stoops year after year of flailing about as results kept getting worse and worse. He really believes that just because a coach one time had it, they can regain it if you just give them time.
The same script, a decade later
Fast forward, and the excuses haven't changed. After Mark Stoops' fourth season, with the program starting to recover (7-6), Barnhart echoed the same sentiment: “You hear a lot of people talk about microwave societies … quick fixes… Now, you essentially have two to three years, or somebody is going to hit the switch.”
And now, nine years later, fans are in the same spot. Stoops is 13–17 over the last two-plus seasons and 4–15 in SEC play during that stretch, numbers strikingly similar to the Joker Phillips era. The offense is broken, the spark is gone, and once again, Barnhart is preaching patience.
The same excuses
In a recent interview with the Herald-Leader, Barnhart offered a defense of Stoops that felt like a replay of his old arguments:
“Make no mistake about it, we want success. We want to work through it. We’ve worked through these things before,” Barnhart said, before praising Stoops for “working hard.”
Wait a minute. Isn't "working hard" the bare minimum? Every coach in America works hard; that's the expectation. The question is whether the work is working. Right now, clearly it’s not.
The line between patience and stagnation
Barnhart has been the athletic director at Kentucky for over two decades. He views coaching decisions through the lens of loyalty and perseverance, not results and performance. When Joker was failing, that loyalty became stubbornness. Now, as Stoops has plateaued, that same loyalty has become inertia.
It’s not about panic or a “microwave culture.” It’s about recognizing a documented pattern of behavior from the athletic director’s office. There’s a fine line between patience and stagnation. Mitch Barnhart has crossed it before. And he is doing it again.
Drew Holbrook is an avid Kentucky fan who has been covering the Cats for over 10 years. In his free time he enjoys downtime with his family and Premier League soccer. You can find him on X here. Micah 7:7. #UptheAlbion