Kentucky Football Head Coach Will Stein is currently preparing for a run in the 2025 College Football Playoffs with his now former program at the University of Oregon. Stein is quickly adding pieces for his coaching staff here in Lexington for his first season with Kentucky.
Earlier this month it was announced that Kentucky is bringing in 2025 LSU’s Offensive Coordinator Joe Sloan, picked by Will Stein to lead his offense.
With former Kentucky Defensive Coordinator Brad White making the decision to follow Jon Sumrall to Florida, many Wildcat fans were interested to see who Stein would go after to fill the void left by White, who has been with the Kentucky Football organization since 2018.
That anticipation was answered earlier this morning when national media broke the news that current Texas A&M Defensive Coordinator, Jay Bateman, will join Will’s coaching staff next fall in the same role. The 52-year-old (Bateman) is from Richmond, Virginia, and played the linebacker position in high school from 1991-1992.
Bateman has held a couple of assistant positions at Benedictine High School and Hampden-Sydney prior to getting his first shot as a defensive coordinator at Siena College, based in New York. After that one season as DC, Bateman was promoted to head coach of the Siena Saints from 2000-2003, where his record was 5-35.
That was Bateman’s only time spent as a head coach. After that he has had several other positions with numerous FCS schools such as Richmond, Lehigh, Elon, Army, and the most notable ones being North Carolina, Florida, and most recent, Texas A&M. Bateman has coached everything from the defensive linemen, linebackers, and safeties.
Jay spent five seasons with Army and was a huge reason for Army’s success from 2016-2018 where in those seasons they had a record of 29-10. After that, he then went on to work under legendary coach, Mack Brown, at North Carolina. In between coordinator roles, Bateman spent two seasons in the swamp for the Florida Gators as their inside linebackers coach from 2022-2023.
You may or may not see Texas A&M fans giving Kentucky fans grief for this hire on social media, because it’s definitely out there. However, I think it is worth noting that Stein is building his coaching staff with members that have experience coaching in the toughest conference in the country — the SEC. Also, if you truly want to give Stein the best chance of success in year one at Kentucky you have to let him go out and get the guys he wants, whether that’s coaches or players. In year one he needs to bring who he is most comfortable with. Also, being a first time head coach, it doesn’t hurt to have non-first time coordinators to help ease that transition of running an entire program.
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