Kentucky Football: Mark Stoops Gets a Contract Extension, Salary Bump

Kentucky Wildcats head football coach Mark Stoops has received an extension to his contract, and a raise. There's not much doubt he deserves that based on his recruiting success alone, which as taken Kentucky to new heights when it comes to the "Jimmys and Joes." Here's Kyle Tucker at the Courier-Journal:

Stoops’ initial contract was set to expire on Dec. 31, 2017. His new one runs out June 30, 2019, so he has five seasons remaining on the deal. He will make $2.1 million this season, $2.2 million next and $2.3 million in 2016 — all part of the original contract — but his pay for the 2017 season has been bumped from $2.4 million to $2.5 million and he’ll get $2.65 million for the added year, a UK spokesman said.

I'm very pleased to see Kentucky showing a strong commitment to football. To the best of my reckoning, this still puts Stoops at or near the lowest-paid coach in the SEC (we can't say for sure, since Vanderbilt's salary is undisclosed, they are a private school), and he's in the ballpark with Dan Mullen and Gery Pinkel, at least for the nonce. It is likely some of these guys will be getting bumps, or have already, so this is probably out of date.

Having said that, Stoops is coming from a coordinator's position and has yet to show results on the field, which justifies his current spot. I expect his salary to rise fairly quickly when we start seeing on-the-field success to go along with the recruiting improvement, and right now and for a while at least, the Big Blue Nation is all about Coach Stoops and his staff. They are doing amazing things so far by bringing in talented players, and that is going to show up on the field eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later.