Century of history says Kentucky can't beat Alabama. Will Stein doesn't care
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Kentucky first began playing football in 1915, and two years later played Alabama for the first time and lost.
The Wildcats have beaten the Tide twice since.
Now that you comprehend the depth of this clearly delusional statement, it’s time to throw it out, anyway: Kentucky can beat Alabama on Saturday.
And Will Stein knows it.
You don’t go on the statewide Kentucky radio affiliate — one that blasts Big Blue from Hopkinsville to Ashland, and Bowling Green to Lexington — and demand fans get to the ballpark early and torment all things Alabama if you don’t at least see a lane that leads to the unthinkable.
“We have to make this the loudest game in the history of Kentucky football,” Stein told Kentucky Sports Radio.
To help pull off one of the biggest upsets in the history of Kentucky football.
A couple of things are at play here for Stein heading into Week 2 of his first season at Kentucky. He has a team that can score points in bunches, and has a fanbase desperate for an Indiana rags-to-riches story.
So he has been playing to it since Day 1.
Kentucky and Indiana — long the basketball schools that used football as a way to tailgate and party until Midnight Madness signaled the beginning of college basketball season — have been in this misery together for more than a century.
Indiana found its way out in two short seasons with coach Curt Cignetti, and Stein has Kentucky already believing it can do the same. It’s the NIL era of the game, and anything is possible, right?
Kentucky spent a boatload of cash in the transfer portal, loaded up on experienced, impact players (who does that sound like) and got a talented quarterback with something to prove. The Wildcats have 13 new starters from the portal, all but one in his fourth or fifth season of college football.
UK may as well have been copying the IU script word for word — including Stein’s declaration at SEC media day that he’s the reason the Wildcats will win.
Cig couldn’t have said it better himself.
Stein knows this is Alabama quarterback Keelon Russell’s first road start in the SEC, and only second start overall. Knows the Alabama offensive line is completely rebuilt, and that Michael Carroll — the only returning starter from last year’s line — is listed as doubtful for the game.
If 65,000 Kentucky fans can make it nearly impossible for Russell and the line to hear and communicate, that goes a long way toward beating the Tide for the first time since 1997. That ’97 team under coach Hal Mumme couldn’t stop a nosebleed, but it could score points with Mumme and Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense, and quarterback Tim Couch’s big plays.
Stein’s offense uses some principles of the Air Raid, and quarterback Kenny Minchey — who lost out to CJ Carr last season in the Notre Dame quarterback competition — played flawlessly in the season opener against FCS Youngstown State. The obvious obstacle: the Penguins aren’t the Tide.
But this is an Alabama team that has lost eight games in the two years since the greatest coach in college football history had enough of the ever-changing landscape of the game, and bolted for ESPN. It’s not an overstatement to say Alabama has been vulnerable without Nick Saban.
So Stein wants UK fans to do their part. Wants them to make Kroger Field a house of horrors by “standing up and screaming obscenities at our opponent.”
Let Alabama know this isn’t going to be another cakewalk, another Saturday stroll like all those games of the past.
“You want to see a great product on the field?” Stein said. “I want to see insane fans in the stands.”
Maybe it’s not so delusional after all.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Century of history says Kentucky can't beat Alabama. Will Stein doesn't care
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