Will Stein Wants You to Lose Your Mind

Will Stein has a simple request for Kentucky fans Saturday.

Lose your minds.

Scream. Yell. Get to Kroger Field early. Forget the tailgate. Be in your seat for warmups. Make so much noise that Alabama quarterback Keelon Russell has to communicate using hand signals, smoke signals or perhaps divine intervention.

Stein wants 65,000 people watching his team warm up. He wants the loudest game in Kentucky football history.

“I want people’s voices hoarse when they leave here,” Stein said Tuesday. “They got to take off work on Monday because they can’t talk.”

Finally, a doctor’s excuse I can enthusiastically endorse.

There’s just one catch.

While Stein wants the rest of us behaving like complete lunatics, he wants his football team to remain approximately as emotional as a Bill Belichick press conference.

I’m not sure Kentucky fans can fathom that. After all, SEC Nation is coming to town. Alabama is paying a visit. Kentucky hasn’t beaten the Crimson Tide since 1997. The game is on national television. Surely there must be some benefit to harnessing all that emotion.

Nope.

“Emotions get you beat,” Stein said. “We want our fans to be emotional. We don’t want us, as players or coaches, to be emotional.”

I’m not sure I buy it. Not completely, anyway.

There is a difference between being emotional and being controlled by emotion. And if ever there were a Saturday when Kentucky could use a little extra juice, I’m guessing the one with Alabama standing on the opposite sideline might qualify.

Emotion can make you reckless. It can also make you run through somebody.

It can make you jump offsides. It can also make you chase a ball carrier another five yards.

It can make you try to be a hero. It can also convince you that the five-star guy lined up across from you isn’t nearly as intimidating as everybody spent all week telling you he was.

Surely Stein knows that. In fact, I suspect he knows it better than he’s letting on. Maybe “emotions get you beat” is exactly what a head coach should tell us on Tuesday. Maybe what gets said inside the Kentucky locker room at 3:20 Saturday afternoon sounds just a little different.

Wink, wink.

Because Stein himself is creating an emotional powder keg. He wants 65,000 people inside Kroger Field for warmups. He wants the place louder than it has ever been. He wants Kentucky fans screaming until they need sick leave. That’s an awful lot of gasoline to pour around the building if you don’t intend for your football team to feel any of the heat.

Stein has been preaching his thermostat-versus-thermometer analogy since he arrived. Thermometers react to their surroundings. Thermostats set the temperature.

Saturday may provide the ultimate laboratory experiment. Because the temperature inside Kroger Field figures to be 487 degrees.

Kentucky is 2–39–1 all-time against Alabama. The Wildcats haven’t beaten the Crimson Tide since 1997.

Stein was there.

He was seven or eight years old and remembers the tailgates and K House more than the actual football game.

Someone asked whether he planned to show his players highlights of that historic victory. Stein acknowledged that he probably should. Then he remembered something horrifying. None of his players were alive.

“I was asking a kid today,” Stein said. “I was like, ‘When were you born?’ In like 2004? I’m like, ‘Oh, shit.’”

There it was again.

For those keeping score at home, that’s two consecutive Stein press conferences with a mild profanity outbreak. After beating Youngstown State, he nearly dropped an F-bomb while explaining his plans to celebrate with a cold beer. This time, discovering that you’re old enough to coach people born in 2004 apparently did the trick.

Wait until somebody tells him they don’t remember Tim Tebow.

Stein insists Saturday isn’t a defining game.

“They’re all big,” he said. “Youngstown State last week was the biggest game of our season because that was the first game. Now we play Alabama.”

Come on, Coach. This one is bigger. SEC Nation isn’t setting up shop in Lexington because Kentucky is playing Youngstown State. ABC isn’t putting it on national television because it’s just another game. And 65,000 people aren’t being ordered into Kroger Field early because Stein desperately wants them to see stretching.

This is Alabama. Stein knows it. His players know it. Big Blue Nation certainly knows it.

The trick isn’t pretending Saturday is just another football game. It’s recognizing that it isn’t—and then playing like it is.

That’s where I think Stein is exactly right. Use the emotion. Don’t let the emotion use you.

So perhaps Saturday afternoon, somewhere behind those closed locker-room doors, the thermostat gets turned up just a notch. Maybe Stein reminds his players what opportunity is standing on the other side of that door. Maybe his voice gets a little louder. Maybe there’s even an adjective we aren’t allowed to print.

Then the doors open.

The players run out.

And everybody settles down.

Except us.

We’re supposed to lose our minds.

Dr. John Huang is a retired orthodontist, military veteran, and award-winning author. Currently serving as a columnist for Nolan Group Media, he invites readers to follow him on social media @KYHuangs. Explore his latest, Whining for Posterity, and all his books at Amazon.