How Mark Stoops Ranks as a College Football Player Among FBS Head Coaches

The football coaches you see wearing headsets on Saturdays were once wearing helmets on college football fields. Of the 136 FBS coaches, 123 played some form of college football. Mark Stoops will readily tell you that he was not among the best of the best, but he is keeping company with some familiar names who played at a high level.

“I was not very impressive as a player—that’s for sure,” Stoops joked before the Cats played his alma mater in the 2021 Citrus Bowl. “I loved my time there—did the best I could.”

Long before he was the Kentucky head coach, Stoops was a three-year letter winner at Iowa. The third of three Stoops brothers to play for Hayden Fry, he was the only one who did not earn All-Big Ten honors. You can blame injury luck. The undersized defensive back had a pair of interceptions, but a knee injury ended his career before he could reach the same heights as his brothers.

Even so, he was a key contributor for teams that reached the postseason. Stoops missed a Rose Bowl appearance by just one year.

When ESPN ranked all of the FBS coaches as college players, one of Stoops’ teammates made the cut, Bret Bielema. A little younger than Mark, Bielema was a walk-on who earned a scholarship for Hayden Fry. The defensive lineman was a part of the 1990 Big Ten Title team. Once their playing days were done, the two coaches would make recruiting trips together to save money, even though they coached at different schools. Instead of spending all of their per diem money on a nice hotel, they shared a room together at the gambling parlor.

“We went to a casino and we won a little bit; at that time, we thought we were really rolling in it,” Bielema said back in 2016.

Bielema and Stoops were among the eight Power Four key contributors who ranked just outside of the Top 30 on ESPN’s list. They’re in a class with a few other familiar names: Jon Sumrall (Kentucky), Shane Beamer (Virginia Tech), Rich Rodriguez (West Virginia), and Frank Reich (Maryland). That’s a motley crew.

This exercise is a friendly reminder that not all great players are great coaches, but there are quite a few impressive names from the past leading FBS programs. Good luck passing Deion Sanders or Eddie George anytime soon.

[ESPN: Ranking all college football head coaches as players]