Previous Signing Day Experience led Will Stein to Honor Every HS Commitment at Kentucky

The current calendar in college football causes some issues. This sport’s postseason is ongoing while the coaching carousel, high school recruiting, and transfer portal are all taking place. That causes some awkward situations for everyone involved. Kentucky is no different. Things really got wonky this year when Will Stein was hired and arrived on campus the day before the first day of the early signing period. We call this head on a swivel season for a reason.

Before he could even get a staff in place, Stein had to make some big roster decisions. The new head coach decided to use a blanket policy. The 36-year-old wanted to honor all of the high school commitments and allow players to sign with Kentucky. Why did the new head football coach in Lexington decide to do that? He’s seen it play out in the other direction

“I’ve been on a staff before where they dropped a kid on the day of signing day, and to me that’s asinine. It’s really poor for a coach to do that. So, I mean, I what to give all these guys an opportunity to learn me, to be a part of this program. Obviously, not everybody that’s signed is still with us. Which I get,” Stein explained on Monday. “This isn’t going to be for everybody. They might have had relationships elsewhere and wanted to go elsewhere, and we said OK.”

“I didn’t want to do anything initially and drop guys the day I get hired, the next day they have to find a new home. I thought that would be really poor by me.”

High three-star wide receiver Dallas Dickerson ultimately got out of his national letter of intent and signed with Georgia. Every other high school commit that signed with Kentucky is currently on the roster.

So when did that situation take place in Will Stein’s past? We don’t know for certain but there was a highly publicized scholarship withdraw situation a decade ago when the current Kentucky head coach was a quality control assistant at Louisville.

After his playing career ended, Will Stein was a graduate assistant at Louisville in 2013. The young staffer was then retained by Bobby Petrino in 2014 and promoted to quality control assistant. Stein would leave UofL in late Feb. 2015 to take a quality control position in Charlie Strong’s Texas program. Weeks before that departure occurred, Stein was on a staff that pulled a scholarship very late during the 2015 recruiting cycle.

Two days ahead of signing day, Louisville pulled a scholarship and offered a grayshirt opportunity to three-star tailback Matt Colburn after the prospect had been committed to the Cardinals for eight months. Irmo (S.C.) Dutch Fork would then ban Louisville from recruiting at their school after this incident. The pre-portal era event became a national college football story.

Colburn would ultimately sign with Wake Forest and would get some revenge against Louisville. The tailback rushed for a school-record 243 yards in 56-35 win against the final Petrino team at UofL. The head coach would be fired just over two weeks later. Colburn finished his Wake Forest career ranked sixth in program history with 2,528 career rushing yards.

The new edition of the Governor’s Cup features a lot of crossed lines as individuals from both sides are trading sides in the rivalry. It seems that Stein may have learned a lesson on how not to do something in his only season working with Petrino.