Nebraska Football: Mark Stoops officially off the coaching search board

The Nebraska football team still doesn’t have a head coach yet. At least not a permanent head coach. While the search to take over for Scott Frost is almost certainly over, it appears there is at least one candidate that we can consider being off the table in Mark Stoops.

Stoops, who is currently the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats has been mentioned quite a bit in conversations with the Nebraska football team. While he wasn’t at the level of Husker rumors that people like Matt Rhule has been, he’s been talked about plenty. However, it appears that any talk of the Kentucky coach coming to Lincoln needs to come to an end.

Mark Stoops appears to be off the raider for the Nebraska football team because he’s been signed to a massive new contract extension with the Wildcats. According to On3, the new contract has him signed through the 2030 season. It will also boost his pay by about $2 million per year. While that doesn’t sound like a huge raise, it likely prices him out of Nebraska football’s range.

Stoops is now set to earn about $8.6 million per year. Considering that the Huskers were paying former head coach Scott Frost about $7 million per year, it stands to reason they’re willing to go a bit higher for the next guy, but probably not $9 million a year for a coach like Stoops.

While Stoops has made Kentucky competitive in a very tough SEC, they haven’t hit the heights that most people would expect someone to get that kind of paycheck.

This season, Kentucky is just 6-5, following a 10-3 2021. He’s never come close to winning his division. But he’s built a winner in Lexington when it had been years since that was a thing that was considered realistic.

With just a week until the Nebraska football season comes to an end, it appears that Mark Stoops has taken himself off the coaching search hot board.