The University of Kentucky began playing football in 1881. In all the time since, no Wildcats team has ever reached 11 wins in a regular season.
So when SEC Network analyst Chris Doering last week picked the 2022 Cats to go 11-1, the former Florida wide receiver was predicting a season of unprecedented bounty for UK.
Yet Doering’s projection, which sounds like Big Blue heaven on earth, contained a hellish element. The one loss Doering foresaw for Mark Stoops and troops in 2022 was to the one team that has been tormenting the Big Blue Nation for eons.
Would the best regular season in UK football history leave you feeling unfulfilled, Cats fan, if the “one” in an 11-1 Wildcats record came from yet another loss to Tennessee?
For Kentucky backers, football losses to Tennessee lead to a dark place. Across the decades, the Big Blue Nation has spent an awful lot of time in the darkness. The Volunteers have won 34 of the past 37 head-to-head meetings over the Wildcats and lead the all-time series 82-26-9.
With one coaching exception, difficulty defeating Tennessee on the football field has been an enduring Kentucky vexation. Bear Bryant, the greatest coach in UK history, went 1-5-2 vs. UT in his eight seasons (1946-53). When the Bear finally broke through and beat the Vols, a 27-21 win in 1953 in what turned out to be his final game as UK coach, it marked the first Kentucky win over Tennessee since 1935.
The one UK coach since World War II who could consistently beat Tennessee was Blanton Collier, who went 5-2-1 vs. UT from 1954-61. So, of course, Kentucky axed him.
For many members of the BBN, the single-biggest frustration during the current Stoops-era ascendancy in Kentucky’s football fortunes is that the Wildcats have not been able to fully turn the tables on the Volunteers head-to-head. Over the past five seasons, going 2-3 vs. the Vols has proven exasperating because the numbers show UK has been been a better overall football program than UT.
Consider:
— Since 2017, Kentucky is 40-23 overall; Tennessee is 27-33.
— In the last five seasons, UK is 21-21 in SEC games; UT is 14-28.
— Since 2017, the Wildcats are 4-1 in bowl games; the Volunteers are 1-1.
— Kentucky has two 10-win seasons (10-3 in each 2018 and 2021) in the past five years; Tennessee has not had one since 2007 (10-4).
— Counting last season’s 20-13 UK upset of No. 10 Florida, Kentucky has had four wins over teams ranked in the AP’s top 10 since Tennessee last produced such a victory in 2006 (a 51-33 win over No. 10 Georgia).
While Stoops is the first UK head man with multiple victories over UT since Fran Curci (3-6 from 1973-81), he nevertheless is 2-7 against the Volunteers overall.
It haunts many Kentucky fans that inferior Tennessee squads scored victories over UK’s 10-win teams in 2018 and last season. In 2018, Kentucky showed up in Knoxville the week after losing to Georgia in the game that decided the SEC East championship with no petrol in its emotional tank. As a result, the Cats suffered a dispiriting 24-7 loss to the Vols.
Last year, the Kentucky defense struggled to slow UT Coach Josh Heupel’s uptempo offense early, but UK was ultimately doomed in what became a 45-42 loss by throwing a pick-six and failing to execute during a final offensive drive with victory available to be taken.
When UK travels to Knoxville on Oct. 29, the Cats will be attempting to back up their 34-7 demolition of Tennessee in 2020 with a second straight victory at Neyland Stadium. UK has not beaten UT two in a row in Knoxville since 1962 (a 12-10 win for Kentucky’s “Thin Thirty”) and 1964 (12-7).
If the 2022 Kentucky season plays out the way Doering projects, an 11-1 Wildcats year would be filled with historically resonant achievements.
It would mean the Cats beating Florida for a second consecutive season for the first time since 1976 and 1977.
It would see UK defeating Mississippi in Oxford for the first time since 1978.
Of most import, it would mean Kentucky beating Georgia for the first time since 2009, snapping a streak of 12 straight defeats to the Bulldogs.
A 7-1 UK league record might be enough to send the Wildcats to the SEC Championship Game for the first time in school history.
At the least, an overall 11-1 mark would likely lock Kentucky into a New Year’s Six bowl. That would be UK’s first major bowl appearance since the 1952 Cotton Bowl.
Yet as divine as the Doering projection would be for Kentucky football fans, if 11 UK wins in 2022 were to come with the Cats getting “Rocky Topped” yet again, that would leave Wildcats backers feeling trapped in a familiar corner of Big Blue hell.
