How UK football is separating contenders from pretenders in summer workouts
Walk into Kentucky football’s new $3 million weight room during a team workout and one feature immediately stands out.
Prominently displayed on a screen hanging above the weight machines in the middle of the room are two lists of five players. On one side, the top performers in power output. On the other side, the bottom five.
“My philosophy, from a competition standpoint, is promote the contenders, expose the pretenders,” Brandon Roberts, UK’s director of football performance, told the Herald-Leader earlier this year as the weight room renovation was being completed. “So, we’re going to put the most measurable things we can up there, being power output and velocity based on total wattage, and be able to show who’s really moving the bar that day and who needs to kind of get out of the bottom five.”
Among the most important features of the redesign for Roberts was the ability to measure almost anything that happens in the room.
That high-tech machinery gives the strength and conditioning staff the ability to tailor individual plans for players to focus on areas that need improvement. But Roberts did not want to keep all that information private.
By posting the top five and bottom five players in each workouts — the lists are labeled contenders and pretenders — he hoped to add an element of competition and peer pressure to the summer conditioning program.
“You definitely don’t want to be on the pretenders board,” junior tight end Willie Rodriguez said. “Everybody can see it. Coaches, your teammates. So you don’t want to be on it.
“... You want to be in that No. 1 spot, so it’s really good competition. Whether we’re benching or squatting or doing whatever, it just makes more competition for the whole.”
The good news for Kentucky is Rodriguez said there is variety from workout to workout on the contenders list.
Roberts pointed to linebacker Antwan Smith and defensive lineman Jaden Williams as two of the most consistent weight room standouts. Rodriguez confirmed Ty Bryant’s assertion that UK’s team captain and senior safety was frequently at the top of the skill position workouts too.
“When we first got the list in there, people were like, “Coach, you’re gonna hurt me. I’m trying to go all out just to get on that board,’” Bryant said with a laugh. “But I mean, it’s just good to see who’s taking things serious and who’s not.
“It’s like you can’t get under the bar and not go 100% because it’s going to expose you at the end of the day. Before, if you didn’t feel like doing a rep, you get it on your chest for bench, you get it up barely. OK, I got it up. But now it’s like it measures the speed to that, so there’s no getting away from it.”
Perhaps most important for locker room dynamics is what happens to the players on the pretenders list.
As two of the more vocal leaders on the team, Bryant and Rodriguez can often be tasked with handling that dynamic.
“You encourage them,” Rodriguez said. “Sometimes you got to pick them up and tell them, ‘Let’s go.’”
“First I ask him what the deal is because I don’t want to just jump down someone’s throat,” Bryant said. “Ask them what the deal is, they tell me, and then try to figure out ways that we can fix the problem. Obviously there’s five people that’s going to be on that list, but the numbers can vary on that list.
“So if there’s a good reason why you’re on that list, then OK, I can work with you. But if you’re just not taking it serious, now we got a problem.”
Coach Will Stein praised Roberts for the work he did leading summer workouts. He was pleased with the team’s progress in preparing for the gauntlet of preseason practice that begins next week.
The base established in those workouts will be key to Kentucky’s ability to reach its ceiling in Stein’s first season as coach and withstand the inevitable adversity that will pop up this fall.
It might even help separate the contenders from the pretenders in actual games.
“I think it’s great, being able to actually kind of compare yourself to other guys,” junior quarterback Kenny Minchey said. “Whether you’re competing against them or not, if there’s a name above you, you want to beat that person. It could be a blank name, and whoever got higher than me, I want to go beat them. That on top of competing with yourself.
“So I think it’s a really cool addition. I’m glad he did that.”
This story was originally published July 27, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How UK football is separating contenders from pretenders in summer workouts."