When Will Stein arrived in Lexington, he didn’t have the luxury of time.
He was preparing his former team, Oregon, for a College Football Playoff run; he had to build a brand-new staff. The transfer portal window was open, the roster had holes to fill, and the SEC doesn’t wait for anyone to catch up. Players were leaving, players were coming in, and high school recruiting had to be finalized. It was chaos.
So, how did he and his staff manage to pull together a top-tier transfer class and stabilize the roster in such a short window? Simple. They didn’t sleep.
When asked about the “work grind” required to build this team, Stein didn’t mince words about what it actually took.
“Talking with people all across the country 24 hours a day. Fielding phone calls in the middle of the night, waking people up in the morning with our phone calls, and just grinding through it,” Stein said during his Monday press conference. “I mean, it’s not rocket science. The people that work the hardest through the portal, through recruiting, give yourself the best chance. And then there’s obviously other factors that are involved in college football.”
That is a common thing that Stein mentioned a lot in his press conference. He mentioned his staff would go “hunt” recruits. This is not a staff that will be afraid of going into the hotbeds and poaching kids from anywhere.
‘Strongly resourced’
One of those “other factors” is obviously NIL, and administrative support. You can work as hard as you want, but in modern college football, you need the backing to close the deal. JMI has caught a lot of slack on the basketball blogs. But both Pope and now Stein believe they have what they need.
Stein confirmed that Kentucky wasn’t just working hard; they were working smart, with the full weight of the university behind them.
“Now, we felt like we were strongly resourced to make sure that we got the right players. We’re still pushing the envelope there, but we have fielded a team I believe that can go out there and compete immediately.”
Building for the SEC
The goal wasn’t just to get bodies on the roster; it was to build a team that can survive the gauntlet of an SEC schedule. That means one thing: Depth.
Stein believes the late nights and the constant phone calls have paid off in the form of a roster that isn’t just top-heavy, but deep enough to last.
“It really starts, like we said, with depth. That’s the key part in college football.”
Kentucky fans have been asking for a staff that recruits with relentless energy. Based on the bags under the eyes of the coaching staff and the talent coming into Lexington, it looks like they finally got one.
Drew Holbrook has been covering the Cats for over 10 years. In his free time, he enjoys downtime with his family and Premier League soccer. You can find him on X here. Micah 7:7. #UptheAlbion
