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Another bowl win for Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops means he’s earned another pay day.
With the Cats’ 20-17 Citrus Bowl win over the No. 15 Iowa Hawkeyes, Stoops has earned a $250,000 bonus, per Steve Berkowitz of USA Today. He will finish the season having earned $600,000 in bonus money.
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops picks up $250,000 bonus as Wildcats beat Iowa in Citrus Bowl to get their 10th win of the season. This moves Stoops’ bonus total for the season to $600,000.
— Steve Berkowitz (@ByBerkowitz) January 1, 2022
Stoops is the 15th-highest-paid coach in college football and will be getting a $1.5 million raise starting next season to bump his annual salary to $6.35 million. His recent contract extension will earn him up to $7.6 million in the final year of the contract, which will be the 2028 season.
At Kentucky, Stoops has now won four straight bowl games and taken the Cats to a bowl in each of the last six seasons.
With a 10-win and Citrus Bowl championship 2021-22 season, Stoops has now earned both of the program’s Citrus Bowl championships (2018-19) and has led two of the Cats’ all-time 10-win seasons.
Thus, it’s safe to say this bonus and every penny to the man who has taken the Kentucky football program that was the laughingstock of the FBS before his arrival is money well spent.
Using the words of Barrett Sallee of CBS Sports, “Mark Stoops is a top-10 coach nationally, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
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