How Urban Meyer and Lou Holtz are helping Will Stein keep UK from eating the rat poison

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When you knock off a top-10 team on the road, the natural instinct is to take a breath and enjoy the view, especially with a buy game like South Alabama coming up where the Cats are currently favored by nearly 3 touchdowns.

But inside the Joe Craft Football Training Facility, 36-year-old head coach Will Stein is frantically trying to make sure his team stays focused.

At 2-1, the Wildcats are riding a massive wave of national momentum with analysts like Greg McElroy saying the Cats played at a level reserved for SEC elites. The danger, of course, is that waves inevitably crash into the shore.

With Major Applewhite bringing his Group of 6 South Alabama squad to Kroger Field for a 12:45 p.m. ET kickoff this Saturday on the SEC Network, the setup has all the makings of a classic trap game.

Stein knows it. So, he went looking for advice from someone who has navigated college football’s highest highs.

During an appearance on The Triple Option podcast, Stein asked three-time national champion Urban Meyer how to manage a locker room after a massive emotional win. Meyer passed down a lesson he learned directly from his own mentor, legendary coach Lou Holtz.

“Lou Holtz would call me every Sunday or Monday after a big win… he would always remind me that’s when you coach them the hardest,” Meyer shared. “Everybody makes the drastic failure of just jumping on them when you lose. But everything’s fragile when you lose.”

The logic is simple, but it makes a lot of sense: when everyone in town is patting players on the back and telling them how great they are, the head coach has to be the one demanding even more.

“When you’re winning, if you tell them to jump, they’ll say, ‘How high?'” Meyer told Stein. “You coach them and hold your staff accountable. Have a Tuesday like you’ve never had before.”

That is exactly what Stein is trying to orchestrate this week. He is actively fighting the hangover effect, noting publicly that the scoreboard resets to 0-0 on Saturday and pointing out that Applewhite has the roster and the coaching chops to make Kentucky pay if they are still mentally celebrating their victory in College Station.

Kentucky proved last week they have the talent and composure to beat anyone in the country. Now, Stein has to prove he can get a team to ignore the outside noise, drop the rat poison, and just play football.

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