Barnhart Commends How Stein Juggled Two Jobs

The busiest six weeks of Will Stein‘s professional career have nearly reached a conclusion. Stein was introduced as the Kentucky head football coach on Dec. 3. The transfer portal closes on Friday. In between it all, he was still working his other job.

On Dec. 20, Oregon knocked off James Madison at Autzen Stadium. On New Year’s Day, they eliminated Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl. He was back in Lexington the following day for the first day of the transfer portal visits at Kentucky. Stein did not stick around for long before returning to Eugene to prepare for a semifinal matchup against Indiana. One day after that loss in Atlanta, he was back to work in Kentucky.

Despite the double-dip, Stein met expectations for his new boss at Kentucky. Mitch Barnhart was impressed with how Stein pulled it off and praised Dan Lanning for being lenient throughout the process.

“I’m amazed how seamlessly he did that,” Barnhart said on Thursday. “I think Dan having done that when he left Georgia to go to Oregon, they had a gameplan on how to make that work. Dan was incredibly helpful in that process and kind to allow him the ability to come back and forth like he did.

“The amount of effort that took on Will’s part to try and be respectful and honor his team that he worked so hard with to develop, and then to be in the middle of trying to hire a staff and get everything in place for what ends up being a really short amount of time to get your roster right, that’s a heck of an effort.”

The first order of business for Stein was assembling a staff of nearly two-dozen people to delegate duties while he spent time preparing to call plays in the College Football Playoff. There were plenty of Zoom calls to ensure everyone was on the same page and prepared to hit the ground running once the transfer portal opened.

Now that he’s finished juggling, and free agency is almost finished, it’s time to put in the work at the facility to ensure the Wildcats have a successful first season under Stein’s watch.

“The fact that Will and his group did that fairly seamlessly at this point in time, it’s amazing… For him to be able to get the winter workouts going, get his culture created, and get to a spot where he can walk through a spring practice and get his system is really, really important,” said Barnhart. “Then you gotta go play a really difficult SEC schedule in the fall, and off we go.”