Will Stein said from the start what he planned to do. "I didn't come here to be average, to be mediocre," he told Kentucky supporters and media at his introductory news conference in December. "I came here to win and win championships." The college football world should have known then that the 37-year-old rookie head coach was different. He does not care about the low football expectations at a basketball school, where the program has lost more games on the field than it has won. At SEC media days, he said he believed he could win at Kentucky simply "because of me." Months later, he forgoed easy extra points in overtime games against South Carolina and LSU, holding up two fingers to signal he would go for two-point conversions and win.
In Stein's mind, there is no room for doubt, only the distance between Point A and Point B and what you are willing to risk to get there. That has been true his whole life. As a state champion quarterback at Trinity High in Louisville, he turned down Division III invitations to play among the best. Kentucky, the team his dad played for, did not even want him as a walk-on. So he stayed home and walked on at rival Louisville. When injuries opened the door against Arkansas State, defenders laughed at the 5-foot-10, 185-pound quarterback. Stein threw for 232 yards and won the game. "I don't back down," he said.
If he could win a starting job at Louisville as an undersized walk-on, then who is anyone to tell him what is impossible? His audacity to believe he can turn Kentucky into a championship program fits a career defined by proving doubters wrong. Because of Will Stein, the 6-1 Wildcats are in the College Football Playoff hunt after being picked to finish 14th in the SEC. They are tied for second in the conference and drawing comparisons to Indiana and Curt Cignetti, another basketball school that became a football power under a bold head coach.
His former offensive coordinator, Shawn Watson, described him as "a tough, gutty, get-it-done guy," then used a word rarely heard in football: "Brave." "He's become the coach that he was as a player," Watson said. "His ability to lead, people gravitate to him."
Source: ESPN General · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing