An SEC East “battle of two-ranked teams” is not the primary narrative in the run-up to Saturday night’s football border battle between No. 19 Kentucky and No. 3 Tennessee.
On last Saturday’s ESPN “College GameDay,” Kirk Herbstreit and the lads were understandably looking past the Volunteers’ contest later that day with overmatched FCS foe Tennessee at Martin and discussing the upcoming showdown of ranked foes between Tennessee and ... Georgia.
The SEC Network’s Peter Burns began the week of Wildcats-Volunteers football by Tweeting out the early line for UT’s game ... with No. 1 Georgia on Nov. 5.
A column by veteran Knoxville News-Sentinel sportswriter John Adams ran under the headline “Kentucky is nationally ranked. That doesn’t make it a threat to Tennessee football.”
So when Kentucky (5-2, 2-2 SEC) tees it up with Tennessee (7-0, 3-0 SEC) at Neyland Stadium Saturday at 7 p.m., the Wildcats are in a unique position for a UK team facing UT.
For once, in a Cats-Vols football contest, there is no pressure on Kentucky. Not in a game whose prevalent storyline is all about Tennessee and the magical season it has so far constructed.
This is as close to a “free shot” as a UK football team will ever have against UT.
Generally in a Kentucky-Tennessee matchup, especially when, like this year, UK has a good team, the pressure on the Wildcats is immense.
That felt-pressure to silence “Rocky Top” comes from a Kentucky fan base that has a robust loathing for all things Big Orange yet has been forced to endure one maddening loss after another by the Cats on the football field to the Vols.
Let’s be frank: With one coaching-era exception, Tennessee football has always pretty much been Kentucky’s daddy.
The greatest coach ever to trod the UK sideline, one Paul “Bear” Bryant, failed to defeat Tennessee the first seven times (0-5-2) he faced the Vols as Kentucky head man.
Bryant’s obsession with beating UT reached such a level that he once sent 11 people to scout the Vols — one to chart each Tennessee player on the field on every play of the game.
It was only in what turned out to be the Bear’s final season at Kentucky in 1953, when he backed off and treated Tennessee as just another foe, that he finally broke through and won.
That was UK’s first win over UT since 1935.
It turned out that Bryant’s successor as Kentucky coach, Blanton Collier, had the whammy on Tennessee. Collier went 5-2-1 vs. UT. Nevertheless, UK fired him after the 1961 season. No Cats coach has had a winning mark vs. the Vols or beaten them more than three times since.
Certainly, almost all of you reading this lived through Kentucky’s embarrassing 26-game losing streak to Tennessee from 1985 through 2010.
The Mark Stoops-era ascension in UK’s football fortunes has produced a different type of frustration in regard to Kentucky’s head-to-head fortunes with Tennessee.
Since the start of UK’s six-year bowl streak in 2016 through the games of last week, UK is 52-31 overall, 27-27 in Southeastern Conference games. Over the same time frame — and including this season — Tennessee is 43-37, 21-32 in the SEC.
In the six seasons prior to this one, UK has had a better overall record than UT four times and a better SEC record four times.
Yet Kentucky is 2-4 head-to-head vs. Tennessee in that time frame, including Volunteers wins over both of Stoops’ 10-win teams, in 2018 and 2021.
It is a mark of Kentucky’s historic futility vs. Tennessee that the 2-7 record Stoops has compiled overall vs. the Vols is the best for a UK head man since Fran Curci went 3-6 vs. UT from 1973-81.
This year against Tennessee, circumstances and media narratives have removed the onus of history from Kentucky.
Saturday night’s contest is all about the Vols. With Hendon Hooker at the controls of Josh Heupel’s frenetic-paced, spread attack, the Tennessee offense is drawing comparisons to the one Joe Burrow directed for LSU’s 2019 national championship team.
UT will enter Saturday’s game No. 1 in the nation in both total offense (571.7 yards a game) and scoring (50.1 points); No. 2 in passing (368.9 yards); No. 4 in red zone efficiency (97.4 percent); and No. 24 in rushing (202.9 yards a game).
Tennessee “is absolutely playing on fire right now,” UK’s Stoops says.
The nation’s college football commentariat can barely contain its anticipation for resurgent Tennessee vs. defending national champion Georgia.
Meanwhile, Kentucky has, statistically, the SEC’s second best defense; a quarterback, Will Levis, whose talent the NFL Draft geeks are salivating over; and, in Christopher Rodriguez, arguably, the best running back in the Southeastern Conference.
Yet the Cats will enter Neyland Stadium Saturday night overlooked and with what is essentially a pressure-free shot to try to ruin Tennessee’s dream season.
If you are UK football, that is not a bad place to be.
