Why Kentucky football coach Will Stein brought spring game back to UK

LEXINGTON — Whether a college football program holds a spring game each season varies. Sometimes, a team doesn’t have one because of a lack of healthy players. At other schools, a coach might merely prefer to end the spring with a final, straightforward practice instead of a traditional intrasquad game in front of fans.

There’s another reason that spring games began disappearing from the landscape in recent years, though.

And that’s now been rectified.

“You put the spring (game) on TV, and then somebody sees a freshman that’s going off, and then they tamper with the kid and the agent. And then they leave your school,” first-year Kentucky football coach Will Stein told The Courier Journal in February, shortly before the Wildcats started spring practice. “So I think because we have one portal (window) now, I think spring games will probably be starting to show up.”

UK averted that situation last year under former coach Mark Stoops. The program didn’t hold a spring game; instead, the final practice was relaunched with a new name, which the Cats dubbed “Kentucky Football’s Spring Showcase.” Though there wasn’t a true scrimmage during the showcase, there were game-like elements sprinkled throughout.

Pertinently: The event did not air live on TV or a streaming service.

“When I was playing at Louisville, nothing was on TV,” said Stein, referring to spring games. “It was just the highlights on WDRB or WLKY. It wasn’t like you had these all-22 shots of plays.”

But during his introductory news conference Dec. 3, Stein was adamant his new program needed a spring game.

“You know the best way to get better at football? Play football,” he said. “This isn’t like basketball. You can’t just go play 5-on-5 hoops out in the backyard. You’ve got to put the pads on, you’ve got to hit, you’ve got to tackle. That’s how you get better. That’s how you become tough. That’s how you win games on the road in the SEC. You’ve got to play football.”

He reiterated that view two months later.

“We already scrimmage in the spring anyways. Why not do it in front of our fans in Kroger Field, get our guys acclimated to that environment, that turf, the clocks in there and play a game in front of our faithful who support us through thick and thin? So that’s that’s important to me,” Stein said. “And like I said in my (introductory) press conference, I firmly believe it: The best way to get better at football is to play ball.

“You can do all these drills all you want — 7-on-7 periods and 1-on-1 drills — but you better put 11-on-11 and play the game to get really good at it.”

The Wildcats’ first spring game under Stein will kick off at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 18. How the contest will be structured will be revealed later. But after UK’s initial spring session March 10, Stein acknowledged it would “be a modified deal,” where the team would permit live tackling early on before shifting to “a thud scenario.”

Stein simply wants to see how his players react to playing in front of a crowd.

“Let’s go out and show people what we’ve been working on,” he said. “It’s not going to be perfect. It’ll be very vanilla. But I just want to see if our guys can go execute and come out of that game relatively clean. … But I think our fans deserve it. And our players are gonna have a lot of fun.”

One situation Stein said he wouldn’t enjoy is taking the field against another team during the spring. Even as college football has become more and more professionalized, that’s one step too far for Stein — though the idea is another nod toward the NFL, where teams hold joint practices during training camp and, yes, scrimmage against each other.

“I like keeping it against us,” Stein said. “I just think you’d probably get some — I just think it could get out of hand a little bit in that setting … because the reality is, we’re not going to be going live tackle the whole time.

“So let’s say you do it against another team that maybe their thud — what they consider ‘non-tackling’ — is not the same as you. And then guys get knocked to the ground and that’s when you get guys injured.”

If nothing else, the spring game will allow outsiders to observe Stein’s hands-on coaching style.

“I always say I coach like I played: energetic, chip on my shoulder, running around. That’s just who I am,” he said. “When I get on the grass, I’m not a big stand-around watcher. Like, I’m paid to coach. That’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna coach. That doesn’t mean I’m a yeller and screamer. But you’re gonna hear me, you’re gonna feel me, and you’re gonna feel the energy on the practice field.”

In Stein’s mind, energy equals confidence.

“Hopefully that trickles down to our players — that they have that same juice, that enthusiasm,” he said, “and really, the ‘get-to’ mentality of playing football at Kentucky.”

Stein could make only one guarantee about the spring-capping exhibition.

“Kentucky wins whenever we have a spring game,” he said, “every single time.”