$50M is the new $35M: Will Stein gets candid about NIL Arms Race

At this point, it’s getting hard to find a sports talk show that Will Stein hasn’t appeared on. After starting his morning talking about the Kentucky vs. Louisville rivalry with Michael Bennett on “Just the Cats,” Stein called into “The Locker Room” on 680 the Fan in Atlanta to promote his program. And, on an out-of-state show, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Stein fielded a question about Kentucky Basketball. As he’s done with just about everything since taking the job in December, Stein knocked his answer out of the park.

One of the hosts asked Stein about his relationship with Mark Pope and whether the two have butted heads over NIL, specifically, a scenario in which the football program may need more money than the basketball program. Stein started by sharing what a diehard Kentucky Basketball fan he is before launching into a commentary on the current recruiting landscape. He said that while Kentucky Football has enough NIL support to be competitive for now, the money in the sport will continue to snowball.

“Look, there’s no bigger Kentucky basketball fan than me, okay? When I say I was like — listen, I’d watch the TV, but I’d mute the TV because I didn’t want to listen to those announcers, and I’d put on Tom Leach and I would listen to him while I was watching the basketball game, so there’s not a bigger Kentucky basketball fan than the head football coach of Kentucky. So that’s number one. 

“I control what I can, and I know what we have is enough currently, but everybody’s pushing. The $35 million-dollar rosters used to be the highest. Now it’s like $50 [million]. Right? And it’s not stopping. So everybody thinks it’s going to end, and all this stuff. Like, show me that it’s going to stop. If it’s going to stop, then I think everybody would be like, ‘Whoa, put a hold on it,’ but nobody is, so continue to push. And it is what it is right now.”

Stein continued, saying that money isn’t everything in recruiting, that relationships remain paramount. After working for Dan Lanning at Oregon, he learned that when adversity hits, players want to know three things: will they be developed, is there a plan to get them to the NFL, and are they going to win in college.

“If a kid comes in and wants me to throw money at him right away, I don’t want that kid on my squad,” Stein said. “I just don’t. And it’s a part of the process, though, now. It is, so don’t shy away from it. There is a point in time in recruiting when it comes down to a closed-door meeting with either me and the player or my GM and the player. And that’s what we do.

“And that is a part of it, so you have to be competitive in that space, but it’s not the first thing that can create a belief in a player that he needs to go to your university.”

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“I never would have left Oregon if I didn’t feel like I could win”

The rest of the interview is mostly stuff we’ve heard before — again, when you do as many interviews as Will Stein, it’s impossible not to recycle quotes — however, it never gets old hearing him talk about how much he believes he can turn Kentucky into a contender.

“I never would have left Oregon if I didn’t feel like I could win, even though my dad played at Kentucky, my mom went to Kentucky, and I grew up a Kentucky fan. Like, that’s like a cute story, but you want to go to a place where you can win. And so I felt like I had the support needed from our administration that we can get this place turned.”

Stein mentioned the highs of the Mark Stoops era and the talent that has come through the program over the past decade as proof that you can win in Lexington. He also used what Curt Cignetti has done at Indiana as an example of how quickly that can happen in the NIL/Transfer Portal era. Stein didn’t have a chance to put his stamp on the 2026 recruiting class, which signed the day after he took the job. He’s proud of the portal class his staff was able to put together a month later. We’re really getting to see his vision with the 2027 class, which is up to No. 16 nationally, with 15 commits. The real results will come this fall — and adversity will inevitably hit at some point — but so far, Stein is pouring every ounce of his relentless energy into building the program.

“When I looked at the job, it was just a job that I always felt like — I’m like, gosh, it can happen. You’ve just got the right mindset consistently. You’ve got to recruit a certain way, and you’ve just got to coach fearless, you know.

“Like, I don’t know how else to do it. This is how I’ve been my whole life. Everywhere I’ve ever been, I’ve been a part of a winning culture from high school football through college, and now as a coach, you know, it’s my job. So I don’t really know any other way.”

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