The opening round of the new CFP bracket is in the books and on the surface it looked pretty simple. Oregon handled James Madison. Ole Miss rolled Jon Sumrall and Tulane. Alabama spotted its opponent a 17–0 lead then did Alabama things. The one real shock came in College Station where Miami walked into Kyle Field and ended Texas A&M’s season.
If you are a Kentucky fan though, all of that quietly turned into a very big Kentucky story.
What Oregon’s CFP win and Texas A&M’s loss mean for Kentucky football and Will Stein
Oregon’s win means this for BBN. New Kentucky head coach Will Stein is staying on the Ducks’ sideline through at least January 1. The transfer portal window opens January 2 and runs through January 16, so the calendar just got tight. If Oregon takes out Texas Tech, Stein is in Eugene until at least January 8. If they play for a national title, your head coach is game planning in the CFP for the entire portal window while trying to build Kentucky’s roster over Zoom.
On paper that sounds like a nightmare. In reality, it cuts both ways.
Yes, you would love your new coach in Lexington full time while the portal is humming. You want him inside the facility, sitting in living rooms, walking recruits through the indoor and the weight room. But there is also real juice in having the offensive coordinator of a CFP contender, maybe even a national champion, walking into homes and telling kids, “Come run this in the SEC.”
Winning at the highest level travels. If Stein’s offense is cooking on national TV in late December and early January, that is a recruiting pitch you simply cannot fake.
Texas A&M’s loss hits different for Kentucky.
Defensive coordinator Jay Bateman is now free. No more game prep. No more CFP practice schedule. He can get to Lexington, sit in those personnel meetings and start turning the whiteboard into a depth chart instead of just a dream.
Miami only put up 10 points on the Aggies. That is a good night for any defense, even if the scoreboard did not cooperate because of turnovers and short fields. Bateman still walks into Kentucky with fresh tape that says his side of the ball did its job on the biggest stage, with the caveat that he did not call the plays.
Pair that with Joe Sloan already in Lexington after being let go at LSU earlier this year and suddenly Stein’s core brain trust is in place. Your offensive coordinator is in the building. Your defensive coordinator is finally freed up to join him. Both can now dive into the same problems.
Who do you re-recruit from the current roster. Who is staying. Who is going pro. Who is sliding into the portal and needs to be replaced. And then, who out there in the portal actually fits what Stein wants this thing to look like.
Because that is the third layer of all of this. Kentucky is not just trying to plug holes. They are trying to redefine what Kentucky football is under Will Stein while the sport changes around them. That means roster building, not just roster surviving.
So what did the first round of the CFP mean for Kentucky. It meant your head coach stayed on the national stage a little longer. It meant your future defensive coordinator just became available. It meant both coordinators can now really start putting their fingerprints on this roster.
And it meant that while Kentucky was sitting at home, the future of Kentucky football was all over the biggest games of the weekend. For a program trying to turn the page, that is not a bad place to start.