Mark Stoops discusses roster turnover, how NIL and transfer portal impact the team

Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops took the podium on Monday expecting to answer a number of questions about his players, the upcoming opponent and perhaps the SEC East standings. Instead, he received a question on recruiting and re-recruiting potential 2023 additions and subtractions through the transfer portal.

As he got into the topic, Mark Stoops made it clear that Kentucky places just as high a priority on retaining talent as it does adding talent.

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“You have to,” said Stoops. “The culture of your team helps and matters – and that’s each other and that’s the players in the locker room, and how they treated each other. In this day and age, it is inevitable that we’re going to have turnover and that you’re going to have guys that enter the transfer portal. And there’s going to be guys that we hopefully add.

“It just happens. It’s part of this new world. Sometimes it’s for the better and sometimes it’s not. As coaches, you always – the thing where people – sometimes we open ourselves up where you just say we’re against it. We just want to continue to help people grow. But sometimes it’s absolutely essential, it’s the right thing for both places. It’s the right thing for a player, it’s the right thing for the program. And other times, there’s young men that you say ‘let me help continue to develop you mentally, physically,’ and give them the tough love that sometimes we all need.

Mark Stoops on NIL, transfer portal

As the conversation continued, Mark Stoops had a very short response to how NIL deals impact the Kentucky staff’s ability to recruit players in any of the three categories.

“NIL is a major factor,” said Stoops. “It just is. I don’t think I need to expound on that anymore, right? It’s a player, it’s a major player.”

While he did not want to get into the weeds on NIL, Stoops did take more time to clarify previous requests for more support in the program and additional funds to compete at the highest level.

“I think any program would say they want more,” said Stoops. “Think of – the Yankees probably want more money. You know what I mean? Everybody needs that. I’ll say this without getting too much into it: we’ve worked our way through that as an administration, as an institution, as a program to find a balance – to make sure it’s right, make sure it’s clean, make sure it’s legal, fair, ethical, moral. And we’ve worked through all that, so our administration has helped us as a program and all of our student-athletes and coaches to get through some of that.

“And yes… we need support from the community, from the state. It is what it is. If we want to compete at the highest level, we’ve got to have money in the bank. That’s legal. And there’s collectives, and we have collectives in place that are supported, that are cleared from our administration and our place that you’re allowed to put money into. So donate.”