ATLANTA -- Kentucky coach Mark Stoops, the dean of SEC coaches, isn't naive.
He understands the volatility of the SEC and is keenly aware of the restless narrative surrounding his program following a 4-8 season a year ago, an exodus of players from the program and longtime right-hand man Vince Marrow leaving to go to rival Louisville as executive director of player personnel.
"I kind of enjoy it. It is what it is, you know what I mean?" Stoops told ESPN on Thursday. "Bring the Youngstown [Ohio] out of me, right? Put me in a corner. Let me fight my way out. ... I feel an obligation to this great university that's been so loyal and so good to me and our fan base. That's what I care about."
Stoops is entering his 13th season at Kentucky, an eternity in the realm of SEC football. Since Stoops was hired in 2013, 27 head coaches have come and gone at the other 13 SEC schools, not counting Oklahoma and Texas. He guided the Wildcats to 10 wins in 2018 and again in 2021 after the program had not won 10 games in a season since 1977. Kentucky had also gone to eight straight bowl games until the dip last season, so nobody in Kentucky's locker room is concerned that the sky is all of a sudden falling.
If you don't count Oklahoma and Texas, only Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and Texas A&M have a higher winning percentage in the SEC than Kentucky (41.7%) over the past five seasons against ranked opponents.
"We're all hungry to get back to Kentucky football," senior linebacker Alex Afari Jr said. "I know Coach Stoops is determined to do whatever it takes for this team to get back on track because things didn't go our way last year, but Coach Stoops is the same guy since I met him."
And, yes, his players said he's very much a fighter, equipped to handle whatever might come his way.
"He's a tough guy. You've got to deal with a lot as an SEC coach, and you see that he embodies what our culture stands for, that blue-collar mentality," senior tight end Josh Kattus said. "He grew up blue collar up in Youngstown, Ohio, so we've got to embody that same thing."
As much as anything, Stoops has raised the expectations surrounding Kentucky football, and he said that was the goal when he arrived. The Wildcats had suffered through six straight losing seasons before Stoops broke through in his fourth season, leading to seven winning seasons over the next eight years before last season when Kentucky lost six of its last seven games -- the only win coming over Murray State. Even so, Kentucky won at Ole Miss and played Georgia to a 13-12 loss in 2024.
"There's always pressure," Stoops said. "I'm proud of the work that we've done, the body of work that we've done. But it's always about this season. Certainly, there was a lot to do in our offseason, and I certainly did not want to go about it by putting my head in the sand. You wanted to take a good, hard look at everything in our program and all areas and make sure we addressed them.
"We embraced that challenge. We didn't run away from it."
Stoops said the Wildcats would have 50 new players this season and acknowledged that that kind of turnover was unique to the program, but he was also quick to add that not all change is necessarily a bad thing. He said Kentucky brought in 26 portal players, nine who started at Power 4 schools.
"It's different, but needed in some ways," Stoops said. "I like the fresh new faces. Those 50 new players don't even care at all about what we did last year. They're worried about what we're doing right now and how we're going to make this team better."
Zach Calzada, with his fourth different team after starting his career at Texas A&M, gets his shot to be the starting quarterback at Kentucky. Stoops said it was important to bring in a quarterback with starting experience and meaningful repetitions in games. Stoops said having redshirt freshman Cutter Boley available gives the Wildcats some insurance.
"Cutter is a young player, and I want to give him the proper time to develop," Stoops said. "That may happen this camp, I don't know, but I think Cutter's a really good football player and I think Zach is a good player with a lot of reps under his belt that has played and won in big games in the SEC, so I like the combination."
Kentucky finished 112th nationally in passing offense last season and threw 15 touchdowns and 17 interceptions.
The loss of Marrow last month, especially to Louisville after he'd been with Stoops the entire time at UK, sent shock waves around the state.
Stoops told ESPN that there's never an easy way to leave a job and that he had no ill feelings toward Marrow.
"We were together for a long time, but you move on, and that's what we've done," said Stoops, noting that he was more focused on keeping his offensive coordinator (Bush Hamdan) for a second straight season after recurring turnover at that position in recent years.
And although he understands the uproar over losing Marrow, Stoops said people forget that Kentucky lost offensive coordinator Liam Coen twice.
"He's an NFL coach now [Jacksonville Jaguars], and you didn't hear nearly as much about that when we lost him," Stoops said. "I like the continuity on our staff. I like the way everybody in the program has attacked everything we've done since last season ended."
Kattus called it a "fourth-and-1 mentality."