In what will go down as a historic coaching carousel in college football, there has been a dominant theme the past few weeks.
Namely, that athletic directors are all in on finding those with prior head coaching experience. Setting aside the unique circumstances that led to Pete Golding taking over at Mississippi, nine of the 11 hires made so far were current or recent head coaches. In one of the two exceptions, the general manager at Stanford (Andrew Luck) opted to hand the program over to a former assistant coach and alum who also happened to be his former teammate (Tavita Pritchard).
That’s not a lot of creativity in general from schools in what is a wild market. That is the product of unique circumstances, such as the conga line from rising Group of 5 coaches out of the American to the SEC, and the lack of hotshot candidates who are coordinators ready to take the next step.
Kentucky, however, is perfectly fine with bucking such a trend—and it may wind up as one of the savvier moves of this offseason. As Sports Illustrated confirmed Monday, the Wildcats’ surprising dismissal of Mark Stoops on Sunday has now led to the pending hire of Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein.
It’s a move that could work out swimmingly given Stein’s track record of producing top-tier offenses and with a résumé that may have just one flaw in it for Kentucky fans (he is a former Louisville quarterback after all). You never are certain about first-time head coaches, especially those taking over in the always brutal SEC, but you can understand where the administration is coming from with this kind of move.
What it means for Kentucky
Just a few years ago, you could make a pretty good case that the Wildcats had the best job in coaching.
The expectations were reasonable and essentially came down to making a bowl game in order to earn another year on the contract. They also paid like a high-end SEC job instead of one of the hardest. Support among the fan base, for as much as they get labeled a basketball-first school, was also extremely underrated.
As the last few years under Stoops have shown, though, this isn’t the great job it once was. The school is no longer in the SEC East for one, and it has seen significant investment from some of its peers within the league that have made it difficult to rise above. The NIL and transfer portal have eroded the development model in Lexington, Ky., as well. Resources, which used to be fine, are no longer quite what it takes to be competitive in the league from a roster-building standpoint.
With diminishing returns under Stoops, something had to change. The school made it clear it would be going in a new direction soon enough. Like 180 degrees from the defensive-minded, sometimes overly blunt head coach who had maybe grown a little too comfortable in the big chair.
Enter Stein, who is capable of fielding an offense that fans want to actually watch on Saturdays and has learned from one of the best in Dan Lanning on how to push every little button to get a team to win big games. He’s sharp, young and should have plenty of good ideas on how to turn around the Wildcats’ fortunes provided he gets the right support from above.
What it means for Will Stein
Stein was one of the names you had pegged as getting a job this cycle, but he was in a position to be choosy as to where his next move was going to be given the position he is in at Oregon and how good the Ducks might be in 2026.
Yet, a return to his home state to be an SEC head coach is certainly too hard for Stein to pass up. Those opportunities simply don’t come often.
Yes, he went to Louisville and grew up in the home of Kentucky’s biggest rival. But that can be overcome, and he has plenty of family ties to the blue side of the commonwealth’s great rivalry. That’s not his biggest issue moving forward.
For all the positives about Stein taking the gig, he will have a big challenge away from the field throughout the course of his tenure: fighting for football to get a proper share of the monetary funds and not playing second fiddle to hoops. That is something Stoops had to fight against and will be top of mind for the program’s new coach right away given that reports have pegged the Wildcats men’s basketball team costs a pretty penny more than their 85-plus-man football squad.
Final Grade: B+
It’s no easy thing to learn on the job in the SEC, but Stein is a fantastic offensive mind with a great track record of developing quarterbacks. That’s a welcome sight in Lexington as the Wildcats go with the complete opposite of his predecessor and hope it’s enough to turn the team’s fortunes around in the next few years.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Grading Will Stein to Kentucky: Wildcats Aim for Upside in First-Time Head Coach.
