Will Stein is One of Us

Throughout the first five months of his tenure as the Kentucky football coach, one thing about Will Stein is abundantly clear: He’s one of us.

The phrase from The Wolf of Wall Street is borrowed often, but it’s usually viewed in a vacuum. There is not just one specific instance where this applies to Stein. It’s evident every time he speaks into a microphone, and it’s incredibly important to the Kentucky football fanbase.

What Kentucky Football Fans Want From Their Coach

Big Blue Nation does not need its basketball coach to be “one of us.” In fact, we prefer it the other way. Over the last 30 years, the most popular coaches were Italians from the Northeast who wore designer suits. John Calipari and Rick Pitino brought an undeniable amount of gravitas to the Rupp Arena sideline. For the lack of a more creative term, we love to see a Kentucky basketball coach who brings aura to this historic program.

That’s not exactly the case for Kentucky football fans. Season-ticket holders who spent years traveling to Commonwealth Stadium made great sacrifices to watch the Wildcats play ho-hum football. A relatable coach went a long way to buying goodwill with the fans.

Hal Mumme played Jimmy Buffett at practices and before games. Guy Morriss rode a motorcycle onto the field. That rocked. When Mark Stoops was at his best, people saw a blue-collar guy who was willing to fight to take down the best in the SEC. Even though Kentucky was often over-matched, they had a chance because of the scrappy underdog leading the program.

Stein Speaks Like Us

Kentucky football fans want to see some of themselves in the head coach. Will Stein sounds like a guy you’d sit next to in the middle of the Kroger Field stands.

“Let’s score some freaking points.”
“If you’re scared, go to church, bro.”
“Hey, we got this kid committed now, he’s good till December. F-that. It’s not. It’s not. You better still go like your hair’s on fire.”

The 36-year-old is the youngest coach in the SEC who grew up right down the road in Louisville. That makes it so easy for Kentucky fans to relate to him, and he gave us another example on Tuesday morning. Not only is he embracing the rivalry with Louisville, he wants to bring the Governor’s Cup back to its original date at the start of the season.

“I used to love it when we played it first (game of the season),” he told Michael Bennett. “That’s what I would do, I would move it up to the opening weekend or early in the season. But you have to play it. If you don’t, that would be not good for the state of Kentucky as a whole.”

Like me and so many others reading this, Stein spent his summers as a kid trash-talking his friends who cheered for Louisville. Governor’s Cup debates raged for months, and because neither team had played a game, nobody could be proven incorrect. It was an annual tradition that amplified the intensity of the football rivalry.

The Devil is in the Details

Will Stein is doing many of the same things that you would do if you were given the chance to become the next Kentucky head football coach. He’s an aggressive play-caller who hunts explosives like he’s playing a video game. When you see him at a practice, he’s probably rocking gear with a Power-K. Old-school UK logos cover the passes handed out to visitors at each practice. It hasn’t been confirmed, but there’s a very good chance you’ll see Kentucky wearing some sort of throwback uniform, thanks to Stein.

After the spring game, he got a little off-topic during his press conference. “You know what I’m thinking about, too? Slax, you probably don’t know this, but I want to get dressed in our locker room over there before the game,” he said.

“Come off the field after we kick our field goal, run all the way up into the Craft Center, have their space in there, then have a nice long — nobody knows, this, I thought about this before the game — have a nice long Cat Walk through the crowd, then come into the tunnel and run out. Be able to dap up some fans and young kids and engage with the players and fans that way.”

That’s a little thing that goes a long way in creating lifelong Kentucky football fans. That idea just popped into his head while preparing for the Spring Game.

How you do anything is how you do everything. Ultimately, those small details, the way he speaks to the fans, that is not what he will be judged by. In college football, it’s all about wins and losses. But those little things matter. Will Stein is resonating with Kentucky football fans because he’s one of us.