Kentucky Wildcats News: UK ranks near bottom of SEC in athletic donations
This needs to change, especially for football.
Matt Stahl is a sports writer for AL. com and, through a series of open records requests, has reported on last year’s donation revenue and broken down the 2025 totals by school across the Southeastern Conference. Other than Vanderbilt — which is a private school and is therefore not subject to open records laws — every team in the SEC was accounted for in Stahl’s story, and the news was quite eye-opening for the University of Kentucky.
Of the 15 schools listed, Kentucky ranked second to last in 2025 and was ahead of only South Carolina. UK received $32,657,330 in athletic donations and — despite that total — had zero earmarked specifically for the football program. Their total was well short of the nine other teams that received north of $50 million, and even the other three schools received between $45 and $49 million.
It was also less than what six schools received for football alone . Despite being at a clear disadvantage when it comes to football donations, new head coach Will Stein is making the most of what he has to work with by cooking up the 9th-ranked recruiting class for the 2027 season. Let’s hope that Stein can continue changing things for the better when it comes to the future of Kentucky Football.
Tweet of the Day Academic excellence 👏 Great work to the nine Cats who achieved a 4. 0 GPA during the 2026 spring semester. pic.