ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

When Will Stein came out to start the game as Louisville's quarterback on Saturday, he could hear Arkansas State defenders laughing.

"They were joking the first play of the game, 'Is that really your quarterback?'" Stein said.

	Jim Owens/Icon SMI
	Louisville quarterback Will Stein is making the most of his opportunity as a walk-on.

When Sun Belt players are making fun of your quarterback, that's not usually a good sign. But Stein had the last laugh, as the redshirt freshman threw for 232 yards and led the Cardinals to a 21-13 victory in his first collegiate start.

It's easy to see why some would be skeptical of Stein. He's listed at 5-foot-10, which he swears is accurate when he's wearing shoes. He sure looks more like 5-9 at best. Let's put it this way: He makes Matt Grothe seem statuesque.

Stein has to be the shortest quarterback to take a snap for a BCS team this season, not to mention that he's a walk-on.

"It doesn't happen much," he said of his situation. "There are some scholarship guys who I know are my size. Guys like (Kansas's) Todd Reesing. Doug Flutie. They're on scholarship, though, so people don't question them.

"I've had to battle this issue my entire life. People have always said, 'Oh, he's so short. How can he throw over all these big linemen?"

It's not like Stein was an early bloomer whose growth spurt suddenly stalled. He's been the literal underdog most of his life.

"We've got some videos of him in the fifth grade, and he's just tiny compared to all the other kids," said his dad, Matt Stein, who himself walked on as a linebacker at Kentucky. "Seventh grade, eighth grade -- he's always been the smallest guy on the field. But he just knew how to handle himself."

Matt Stein said his son had a ball in his hands from the time he could walk and never wanted to play another position. One time Will's uncles were coaching a third- and fourth-grade flag football team and needed a quarterback. They asked the league officials if they could use their nephew. Will came in and slung the ball around the field.

He was in kindergarten at the time.

Stein kept making it impossible for his coaches to move him. When he went to Trinity High School, arguably Kentucky's most powerful program, he won the starting quarterback job on the freshmen team by beating out several candidates. The varsity coach asked the freshmen coach if he was crazy, because Stein would never start for the real team.

But Stein earned that job his senior year, completing 70 percent of his passes for 3,697 yards and a school-record 54 touchdowns in leading the Shamrocks to the state title. Matt Stein said several colleges saw the statistics and asked him to send tapes. Once they got a look at the film, they invariably told the Steins, "No thanks, he's too small."

Stein decided to walk on to Louisville, where the coaches knew him well. He had backed up Bobby Petrino's son at Trinity as a junior, and Steve Kragthorpe's son was a freshman there in Stein's senior year. Stein came to college determined not to be just a scout-team player, and he impressed the coaches in practice. In fact, many on staff believed he had all the qualities of a starting quarterback -- toughness, accuracy, leadership -- except height.

He got his chance last week when the two quarterbacks above him on the depth chart -- Justin Burke and Adam Froman -- were out with injuries. He will probably go back to the bench for this week's game at West Virginia, but Kragthorpe hasn't ruled out playing Stein again.

After the win at Arkansas State, Stein was hungry because he hadn't eaten much before the game. Since he's a walk-on, Louisville can't provide him with a postgame meal. So his family took him out to eat at Waffle House, perhaps the appropriate spot for an underdog who doesn't care much about appearances.

"I know there's a ton of people who believe in me, but there's a ton of people out there who I think hate it," Stein said. "They see me going out there at 5-10, 5-9 -- whatever you want to call me -- and they're just laughing.

"I play for ... all the kids my size who want to play quarterback. You can do it. I know you can."