LEXINGTON, Ky. — If media reports are accurate, this week’s 2022 SEC spring meetings in Sandestin, Fla., have galvanized the debate over how many Southeastern Conference football games to play each season.
On one side are those (Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State) advocating for the league to continue to play eight conference games a year even after the pending arrival of Oklahoma and Texas into the SEC occurs no later than July 1, 2025.
Arguing on the other side are those (Alabama, Florida) who want another league game each season to create more high-level matchups and alleviate the “scheduling staleness” that arises from playing so many of the same teams every year.
For football fans in the commonwealth, an ancillary concern arises from the SEC scheduling debate: If UK is potentially required to play a ninth league game, could that lead to the demise of the Wildcats’ Governor’s Cup rivalry with Louisville?
Before we explain what Kentucky should do about its series with U of L (which is currently contracted through 2030) even if the Southeastern Conference goes to nine league games, a brief word on the SEC scheduling talks.
Apparently, the league is committed to doing away with divisions (a mistake) once Oklahoma and Texas arrive. According to media reports, the leading plans for future SEC scheduling are a 1-7 model if the league stays at eight games or a 3-6 model if its goes to nine.
The first scenario would mean each SEC team plays one opponent every season with its other seven league foes rotating. The underlying principle is the same in the second scheduling format, except teams would play nine league contests with three permanent rivals and six rotating opponents.
Simply put, the SEC using a 1-7 scheduling format would be disastrous. To understand why, let’s look at Alabama. Presumably, archrival Auburn would be the Crimson Tide’s “one.”
So that would mean there would not be Alabama games with longtime rivals LSU or Tennessee every season. How is that outcome conceivably good for the SEC or for college football?
In the current SEC scheduling format, you play the other six teams in your division every season, have one permanent inter-division foe and one cross-division rotating opponent. The problem with that, as many see it, is the long gap that occurs between games with some teams from the other division.
For instance, Texas A&M entered the SEC in 2012. The Aggies football team is not presently slated to make its first appearance in Lexington until 2025.
However, if the cost of fixing that is giving up annual games with teams — Tennessee, Florida — that stir the emotions of the Big Blue Nation, seeing Texas A&M more often is not worth that.
Once Texas and Oklahoma come on board, the least destabilizing moves for the SEC would be to 1.) keep divisions; 2.) assign the Sooners to the East Division and the Longhorns to the West; 3.) make OU-Texas permanent inter-division foes; 4.) go to nine league games.
Instead, the SEC seems well down the road of “over-thinking” its football scheduling.
The uncertain future of the College Football Playoff also hangs over SEC scheduling discussions. Will the playoff ever expand after “The Alliance” of the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 tanked the proposal to go to 12 teams?
In a world of four-team playoffs, adding a conference game seems foolhardy if the goal is to get multiple SEC teams into the field as often as possible.
Still, it seems inevitable to me that the SEC will eventually go to a nine-game league schedule. When that happens, what should Kentucky do about its annual game with Louisville?
That one is easy.
For at least three big reasons, UK should keep playing it.
1.) If the SEC adopts a scheduling format in which Kentucky and its primary league rival, Tennessee, no longer play annually, facing U of L every year fills the rivalry void.
2.) Even allowing for the fact Kentucky has gone 12-15 vs. Louisville in the modern history of the Governor’s Cup (since 1994), that still represents 12 victories that have moved the needle for Wildcats fans.
That matters because Kentucky’s success rate vs. the other two teams Cats backers most yearn to beat — Florida and Tennessee — is two wins over the Gators since 1986 and three victories over the Vols since 1984.
3.) In the here and now, UK has beaten U of L three straight and four out of five. The past three Kentucky victories over Louisville have come by scores of 56-10, 45-13 and 52-21.
Even those lopsided margins don’t fully tell how dominant the Cats have been at the line of scrimmage vs. the Cards. This stat does: In its past three meetings with U of L, UK has scored a combined 17 rushing touchdowns. On 10 of those scoring runs, the Wildcats’ ball carrier entered the end zone without ever being touched by a Cardinals’ defender.
Rivalries tend to be cyclical and Kentucky’s current level of dominance over Louisville won’t last forever. Nevertheless, talking about ceasing to play the Cards at the exact point when Mark Stoops has opened a substantial gulf between UK and U of L doesn’t make much sense.
