Kentucky football coach Will Stein addresses media for first time
Former Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein was named as the Kentucky Wildcats football coach following the firing of Mark Stoops.
- Louisville football gave Will Stein a chance to walk on at quarterback when UK didn’t make a spot for him, despite his ties to the program as a legacy player.
- Will Stein’s father, Matt, played for the Kentucky Wildcats from 1982-84.
- Stein will reportedly bring Justin Burke, whom he backed up as quarterback at UofL, to his UK staff as offensive coordinator.
One word was missing from Will Stein’s introductory news conference speech as Kentucky football’s new head coach on Wednesday.
And it might just be the one word that helped shape his career ascension to becoming the head coach the most.
Louisville.
Stein already knows his audience well. He craftily dodged giving much praise or credit to the Cardinals until he was asked by a reporter some 25 minutes into a Q&A session.
Welcome to the rivalry, coach Stein.
The competition between UK and UofL football just substantially ratcheted up a notch. The race to be the first program in the commonwealth to make the College Football Playoff is officially on.
That may sound a bit outlandish but understand what the best rivalries do. Both sides, as reluctant as they are to admit it, push each other to greatness.
That’s what Stein’s hire is going to do.
“I’ve won at every single level that I’ve been at, high school, college, and now the goal is to win here and not win five years down the road, 10 years down the road, to do it now,” he said.
He won in college. What college is that? If you didn’t know, you still wouldn’t after nearly 10 minutes of his opening statement.
For review, UofL gave Stein a chance to walk on at quarterback when UK didn’t make a spot for him, despite his ties to the program as a legacy player.
Matt Stein, his father, played for the Wildcats from 1982-84, and he grew up going to games as a longtime season ticket holder.
“I went to the rival, so there was some four or five years of some bad blood,” Stein said. “But that’s the competitor in me.”
After his playing days were done, former UofL offensive coordinator Shawn Watson sent out feelers and letters of recommendation for Stein to get a graduate assistant position on a staff before one opened at Louisville and Stein got his start on former coach Charlie Strong’s staff.
He spent a year on Bobby Petrino’s staff with the Cards before joining Strong at Texas, which is where he met Jeff Traylor, who hired him as offensive coordinator at UTSA.
Stein will reportedly bring Justin Burke, whom he backed up as quarterback at UofL, to his UK staff as offensive coordinator. But despite all those Louisville ties, he’s already begun calling them “the people down the road.”
One person down the road in particular understands the challenge that Stein presents.
UofL coach Jeff Brohm gave a muted congratulations that would have been much more hearty had it been at any other school in the nation. In the same breath Brohm said he was excited for Stein to have that opportunity, he cut to the chase.
“That’s our rival, so we’ll do everything we can to win that game when we get to it,” Brohm said.
The competing will start way before the next Governor’s Cup game on the field.
Stein can challenge Brohm, who was his first quarterbacks coach during Stein’s redshirt freshman season under Steve Kragthorpe in 2008, in ways that former UK coach Mark Stoops could not.
They’re both products of Trinity High School. Both former UofL quarterbacks. Both served, albeit in very different capacities, on the coaching staff of Petrino and took elements of his innovative offensive scheme as they were forming their own styles, respectively.
The best in-state high school recruits who used to look for more established programs elsewhere won’t do much of that anymore with Stein and Brohm commanding the two power conference schools.
Football in Kentucky just got a lot more intense.
Thanks, coach Stein.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
