LEXINGTON, Ky. — At the end of the day, here’s what Kentucky's 21-0 loss to Iowa in the Music City Bowl last Saturday meant: Nothing.
At the end of the day, here’s what all the bowls outside the College Football Playoff mean: Nothing.
Don’t get me wrong. Bowl games are a great experience for the players, fans and ESPN programming. A bowl victory can apply the icing to the cake of a team’s season. Just the appearance can be the reward for a successful campaign. It can pad a coach’s contract with additional bonus money. A bowl experience can be a rewarding and emotional end to a player’s collegiate career.
And the two CFP semifinals were tremendous. Former Kentucky assistant coach Sonny Dykes has engineered the Cinderella story of this and many seasons by taking TCU to Monday’s national championship game, thanks to the Horned Frogs’ 51-45 win over Big Ten champion Michigan in a Fiesta Bowl shootout. And Georgia staged an epic comeback, rallying from two touchdowns behind in the fourth quarter to outlast Ohio State 42-41 in the Peach Bowl.
There were other entertaining bowl games. To name a few: Arkansas’ 55-53 triple-overtime win over Kansas in the Liberty Bowl; Florida State’s back-and-forth 35-32 win over Oklahoma in the Cheez-It Bowl; Mississippi State’s 19-10 win over Illinois in the ReliaQuest Bowl and Tulane’s 46-45 victory over USC in the Cotton Bowl.
A special shout-out to Troy coach Jon Sumrall, the former UK linebacker and assistant coach who as a first-year head coach led the Troy Trojans to a 12-2 season, including an 18-12 win over the University of Texas San Antonio in the Cure Bowl.
Only rarely does a bowl game impact a team’s following season, however. Oh, the extra bowl practices can be helpful. The actual game experience can benefit young players, especially those who saw little on-field action during the regular season. A bowl victory can build momentum and boost ticket sales. But none of those are guaranteed predictors of continued success.
Take Kentucky’s dramatic 20-17 Citrus Bowl victory over Iowa that ended UK’s 2021 season with a 10-3 record, the second time in the past four seasons Mark Stoops’ Cats had posted double-digit wins. In the post-bowl glow, expectations soared to the point that even the SEC media voted UK to finish second behind Georgia in the East Division for 2022.
As we know, that didn’t happen. New offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello never clicked. Star running back Chris Rodriguez was suspended for the first four games. Star quarterback Will Levis played hurt for much of the season. South Carolina and Vanderbilt upset the Cats at Kroger Field and Tennessee smashed Stoops’ squad in Knoxville.
Saturday’s shutout loss to the Hawkeyes in Nashville capped UK’s disappointing season at 7-6 overall and 3-5 in SEC play. It was the first time that Kentucky had been blanked since 2019, just the second time since 2012. As far as the outlook for the Cats’ 2023 season, however, the outcome meant zilch.
After all, Kentucky will have a new quarterback next fall in North Carolina State transfer Devin Leary. It will have a new running back in Vanderbilt transfer Ray Davis, who rushed for 1,042 yards for the 5-7 Commodores. It will have a couple of new faces on the offensive line in Marques Cox, a transfer from Northern Illinois, and Tanner Bowles, the Glasgow native transferring from Alabama.
It will also have a new-not-new offensive coordinator in Liam Coen. Though there has been no official announcement, all signs point to Coen, UK’s popular 2021 play-caller, returning to Lexington after spending this season as Sean McVay’s chief offensive lieutenant with the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams.
Those additions assure the football Cats little for next season, but they are far more note-worthy than the egg Kentucky laid at Nissan Stadium on Saturday. Come Sept. 2, 2023, the Cats will be 0-0 when they face the Ball State Cardinals at Kroger Field. Next season is next season.
