When Will Stein arrived in Lexington, he didn\u2019t have the luxury of time.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t wait for anyone to catch up. Players were leaving, players were coming in, and high school recruiting had to be finalized. It was chaos.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t sleep.<\/p>\n
When asked about the \u201cwork grind\u201d required to build this team, Stein didn\u2019t mince words about what it actually took.<\/p>\n
\u201cTalking 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,\u201d Stein said during his Monday press conference. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s not rocket science. The people that work the hardest through the portal, through recruiting, give yourself the best chance. And then there\u2019s obviously other factors that are involved in college football.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is a common thing that Stein mentioned a lot in his press conference. He mentioned his staff would go \u201chunt\u201d recruits. This is not a staff that will be afraid of going into the hotbeds and poaching kids from anywhere.<\/p>\n
One of those \u201cother factors\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Stein confirmed that Kentucky wasn\u2019t just working hard; they were working smart, with the full weight of the university behind them.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we felt like we were strongly resourced to make sure that we got the right players. We\u2019re still pushing the envelope there, but we have fielded a team I believe that can go out there and compete immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Stein believes the late nights and the constant phone calls have paid off in the form of a roster that isn\u2019t just top-heavy, but deep enough to last.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really starts, like we said, with depth. That\u2019s the key part in college football.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n