Audible

Today I stood in the shotgun, looked over at Joker, and changed my play.

By chance, I ran across some abhorrent reviews of the hotel we were set to stay at.  Oddly enough, the hotel we'd booked originally, the downtown Crowne Plaza, still had rooms.  I was able to book them for $153 a night, or $56 a night less than we once had them booked for.

You think people are staying away from this game in droves?

SEC SEC SEC SEC

I looked at my buddy Ashley Ward this afternoon and said, "The SEC is going to take a beating today."  I couldn't have been more wrong.  

Sorry to say, I missed the Vandy game, but I'm real happy for them.  As I type, LSU is up 35-3.   It is hard to believe Georgia Tech beat Georgia a scant four weeks ago.  They are being dominated. Interesting that LSU was the victim of 2 of ESPN's 4 plays of the year.  They easily could have beaten Alabama and the Arkansas loss was a pure fluke.  I am glad they aren't on the schedule next year.

As much as I'd love an SEC sweep, I ain't rooting for South Carolina tomorrow.

Bowl Preview

What follows is my preview of the 2009 Liberty Bowl. It will be chalk full of in-depth analysis about the opposing team strengths and weaknesses and a will contain a thoughtful dissertation on each team's relative merits and chances to win. Only the exact opposite.

Look. The game comes down to something pretty simple. The UK defense is going to have to show up like it did early in the season and completely shut the Pirates down. Hartline and Co. might be able to scrape together 12 or 14 points, but that is going to be it. Even with a dominant defensive performance we could still lose the game. A stupid special teams play or offensive blunder could sink the boat all by itself. That is how little confidence I have in our ability to generate offense.

Obviously, the news was bad enough earlier in the week with the announcement that Randall Cobb would not play. Today word comes that Moncell Allen is academically ineligible, leaving us with only two healthy tailbacks. If one gets hurt, the other will have to do something no UK back has done all year, carry the ball more than 10 times in a half.

I've gone over several reasons why this game is important. Mike Hartline and the receivers could use some confidence going into the off season. A winning record would help recruiting and a losing record with a loss for a C-USA team would not. Perception is everything. Going from back to back 8-5 seasons to a 6-7 one, even with all the offensive firepower graduated and all the injuries is going to look like a big step back. Finally, I am going to be there, so a win is crucial. There is nothing more deflating than driving a certain distance only to watch your team lose.

On that note, lets leave talk of the actual game and move to the Memphis bowl experience. To know me is to know that I leave little to chance when planning my fun. If I could bottle the time I've spent on Tripadvisor, Expedia, hotels.com, Google maps, VRBO.com, ebay (for tickets) and Googling things like "Nashville upscale restaurants" over the last 3 years, I would probably find that I had time for a second job. It is an obsession with me. I want to know the shortest route, the best place, the best deal and so on. So you might be surprised to learn my Memphis plans are still somewhat up in the air.

On Thursday the Scutches and Big and Little Z will meet somewhere in Nashville, leave a car, and head to The Memph. In a move I might live to regret, I talked everyone else into cancelling our $210 a night rooms at the Downtown Crowne Plaza in favor of a Holiday Inn Select (80) near the airport and, consequently, the stadium. I figured a $250 savings per couple could hail a lot of cabs. Anyways, we plan to head to The Peabody to see the ducks walk at 5 that day, followed by a one block trip to Jillians to catch the second half of the Rose Bowl, then dinner next door at Texas de Brazil, at 7. It will be my first experience at a Brazilian steakhouse themed place. Reviews, including a shout out from Memphis native Jeremy Jarmon in Sunday's Herald-Leader, are good. From there, we are looking at a short cab ride to Beale or maybe more revelry in Peabody Place. (Other than Jillian's and T d B, I have no idea what else is there)

Here is what I have planned for Friday other than actually attending the football game:



That's right, jack. Tailgating? Not sure how it will play out. Dinner? Not a clue. A trip to Beale? Not sure if I'll make it there or not. I am about half pumped about this. I'll be kind of like this year's version of the Cats only hopefully more successful. See, I'll spend the first half of the trip as a careful, dropback passer. My meticulous planning has yielded the results it was expected to yield. Will we have a great night? Maybe maybe not, but the chances of us having a shitty night are pretty small.

On Friday, like the second half of the season, I am going to run some hurry-up, option, run and shoot and spread. I'm just going to take the snap and see what transpires. I could end up drinking beer in my hotel room until its time to drive to the stadium, pay some sketchy woman $20 to park in a yard I'm not sure belongs to her, pick up McDonalds on the way back to the hotel, and be in my PJs drinking Bud Light out of a can at 9:30. It could be the Tennessee debacle all over again.

On the other hand, I might find a decent place to tailgate, see a big win, find the right place to eat Bar-B-Q on Beale about 9, and look up at 2 am to see Big Z singing karaoke with Dickie Lyons and Ashley Judd while I'm holding a dirty gin martini someone I don't know bought for me. I could be a Georgia game Randall Cobb, right up to throwing a regrettable pick at the bitter end of the contest. A good unplanned night can be lot of fun, but even the best have a tendency to end poorly.

There are two central reasons for the lack of a plan. First, advanced parking was harder to come by than a bathroom vending machine condom at a Scissor Sister's concert. I followed several auctions on Ebay and never did a pass go for less than a ridiculous $65 bucks. To put this in perspective, I am paying $80 for a roof over my head for a day, with a shower, maid service, hairdryer and television and people will pay over 81% of that for a 5' by 9' piece of grass that they will leave their car on for five hours. Of course, you know what they call these people: people who will definitely not be drinking in their hotel room two hours before the game. So there is that.

After consulting a number of sources for game day options, I don't know what to expect in terms of grassy spot, beer in plastic cup friendly, port-a-potty available parking. Given that there appears to be little in the way of advanced parking, and the stadium holds 62,000, I'll probably be optimistic, pack the beer pong table and cooler and look for a spot. Surely there will be other stadium lots that are grassy and have johns. If you know of anything solid out there, now is the time to send me a comment.

Speaking of ebay, it bears mention that while passes were going for a premium, any random Joe could have bought 40 yardline seats for under face. Yesterday.

The second reason Friday lacks structure is, simply, that Bar-B-Q places on Beale generally don't take reservations.

So there you go. If you are down there and want to hook up with us, shoot me an e-mail or text.

Suggested BCS "fix"

Watching the TCU v. Boise St. San Diego Credit Union Bowl today reminded me of how much I love Bowl games and college football in general. This was a killer matchup between two non-major conference teams that could have been in a sixteen team playoff for D1A. If such a thing existed. As much as I admire both teams, and as compelling as Boise's 12-0 regular season record is, watching this game did nothing to make me yearn for a college football playoff. If they played twenty times, Florida and Oklahoma would have torn either of these teams apart all twenty.

Knowing this didn't make me enjoy the game any less. There is just something about football. Watching two teams of college kids, coming from different systems and different backgrounds, playing their asses off to win a game is always compelling. The fact that two other teams somewhere else on the planet could play the game better is almost irrelevant.

This is the number one reason why college football is the best sport on earth. The number two reason is something many fans forget this time of year. College football has, far and away, the most meaningful regular season of any sport that purports to crown a champion. Proponents of a lengthy playoff wax on about how compelling that matchups would be, and the interest they would generate. These people fail to realize that a three or four week playoff would destroy the very thing that makes college football unique, and generates most of the interest in the sport to start with.

Every Saturday for two months, I can tune in the television and see multiple, meaningful games that impact who will play in the big bowls and who will play for the national championship. Any one loss can doom a team's season, depending on that team's ultimate goal. Every game matters. Compare this to the NFL. As much as I like the San Diego Chargers, they started the season 4-8 and still have the chance to make the playoffs.

How excited am I supposed to get for each regular season game knowing that? I can't. The NFL is bullshit compared to college football. Admit it, outside of your "team", your fantasy team, and whatever bets you lay each week, you wouldn't give a crap about the NFL either.

Against that backdrop, we have the cartel that gets to decide who plays for the national championship every year. It is a crappy system, though I would submit it is better than the old system of crowning a mythical national champion after a series of totally unregulated bowl games. That Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral field this year and was left out of the national championship is silly. Some years there are three or perhaps four teams that can argue that they had the best regular season. But the number is never more than four. With that in mind, here is my solution to the BCS "mess" if you want to call it that.

Let's start by acknowledging that the BCS, its television contracts and the resulting system are really about money and territory. Only so much change can be tolerated. Here is a basic but unassailable plan to wet the beaks of the people in power while pacifying the restless natives by creating a playoff of sorts:

The BCS keeps the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar and adds the Gator as a fifth bowl. These bowls are to be played on January 1 or 2. At the end of the regular season, the BCS rankings will spit out the four best teams. From there, the teams will be placed as follows:

1.The No. 1 team, assuming it is a conference champion, shall play in the bowl designated by its championship. Fiesta= Big 12, Sugar=SEC, Orange=ACC, Rose=Pac-10 and/or Big 10. The Gator was added for this situation. This will become the Big East's champion's designated bowl. If the #1 team is not a conference champion, it is placed as set forth below.

2. The No. 2 team, assuming that it is a conference champion, shall play in the bowl designated by its championship. If not, it is placed as set forth below.

3. The No. 3 team, assuming it is a conference champion, will be placed in the bowl designated by its championship unless both #1 and #2 are conference champions. Assuming both #1 and 2 are conference champions, the No. 3 team will play against the #2 team at the bowl that team is slotted for. If either #1 or 2 is not a conference champion, it will play at #3's conference designated spot. If neither #1 or #2 is a conference champion the Number #3 team shall play the #4. In the unlikely event none of the top 3 teams are conference champions, the top 2 teams will select, in order, which bowl they wish to attend. The #3 team will then be matched against the #2 team.

4. The #4 team will play highest ranked conference champion at that team's designated bowl unless none are conference champions, in which case it will play the #1 team.

5. Notwithstanding 1-4 above, in the event that both the PAC-10 and Big-10 champions are ranked in the top 4, the teams will play in the Rose Bowl unless the National Championship game will be played in Los Angeles. Assuming the National Championship game is slated for Los Angeles, the lower ranked team will be treated as a not having been a conference champion and will be slated accordingly. If these two teams play in the Rose Bowl, the higher ranked of the two remaining teams shall play in the bowl designated by its conference championship against the final remaining team. If the higher ranked team is not a conference champion, but the lower ranked team is, the teams shall play in the bowl designated by the lower ranked team's championship. In the event neither team is a conference champion, the bowl of the team with the higher ranking will host the game.

6. The other BCS games will be populated by champions from the other BCS conferences and wildcard teams in accordance with the current BCS system.

7. With the exception of the Gator Bowl, all other bowls remained unchanged.

8. The winners of the two games between the nation's top four teams play in a National Championship game approximately one week after the Jan 1 & 2 games. The game will rotate between BCS venues, as it does now. One thorny issue. Does the Gator get added to the rotation?

This plan is the best anyone is going to come up with. It leaves the current situation virtually untouched while getting us a lot closer to a true national champion. The value of being a conference champion, which seems so important to the BCS, is left intact. The Rose Bowl gets thrown a bone. It doesn't cheapen the other BCS bowls any worse than they've been cheapened. Most of all, it puts some pressure on the various BCS conferences to put a good product on the field. As long as this ACC proves incapable of producing a championship contender, the Orange is not going to host a national semifinal. This is the way it should be. I cannot imagine a coherent argument against this system from either a realist's (which is to say fiscal), academic (no change other than for the two teams that would play twice) or competitive standpoint.

Of course, if I am missing something, let me know. But, if you are a hawk preparing to tell me it doesn't go far enough, you will get a debate about practical reality of doing any more.

For what it is worth, this year's national semis would be Florida v. Texas in the Sugar and Oklahoma v. Alabama in the Fiesta. Yeah, it is a little incestuous, and USC is left out in the cold, but it would be sweet. By the way, the other games would be Rose: USC v. Penn St., Gator: Cinci v. Utah and Orange: Virginia Tech v. Ohio State. That would be five great games, better than what we are looking at now.

Memphis Tailgating

Occasional poster Big Spence turned me on to this website, which offers some great insight into tailgating in Memphis. If you are going to use it to pick a place to park on game day, be mindful to compare the parking lot map to the map provided by the Liberty Bowl's site. It looks like the Liberty Bowl is utilizing some of the space ordinarily open on game day.

I am still trying to secure parking ahead of time. Some spots have been available on ebay but have been going high. Calls to the number provided by the Liberty Bowl regarding parking either go unanswered or kick over to a full voicemail box.

Finally, I tried to secure parking by requesting a press credential. I felt the request was legitimate, since I will be reporting on the game in a forum that could be described as presslike. My request was denied, perhaps by a Liberty Bowl official delusional enough to think someone from the legit media outside of Kentucky or Greenville, South Carolina gives a shit about this game. But at least he'll still have my parking spot and my spot on press row in case Sports Illustrated shows up to report on this pivotal January 2nd game between two of college football's top 60. Bastards.

You have to admit, its pretty money that I even tried this.

Preview Part 2

Five days later, I'll get back to the 2009 season preview. Since I wrote on Tuesday, The Herald Leader and other outlets have confirmed that JC transfer Chris Matthews is on board for next year. That is good news. Of course, this news begs the #1 questions of the off season. Who is going to be throwing Matthews the ball?

The 2009 QB Derby may be a very crowded field. Depending on how the Liberty Bowl plays out, I think Mike Hartline is your morning line favorite. That's right. If you think Cobb blew him out of the water as a starter, you are mistaken. Because Hartline started all the non conference games, the comparison isn't entirely fair, but the team was 5-3 under him, with the losses coming to Alabama, USC and Florida. That left Cobb 1-3, with losses to Georgia, Vandy and UT. Both won one conference game. Hartline's was the miracle against Arkansas, Cobb's a war of attrition against Mississippi State. I will concede that the offense rarely looked good under Hartline, with the exceptions being last four minutes against Arkansas, and a good run against an overmatched WKU team. In contrast, Cobb got us going against Norfolk State, all game long against Georgia, and in the second half of the Vandy game. Both made some costly mistakes. Cobb has a wow factor that got a lot of people excited. But in the end, he just wasn't able to deliver in two winnable games at the end of the season.

Most importantly, it appears that the 2009 Cats are once again going to be short on playmakers. With Cobb's long term future at wide receiver, and his value as a reverse runner and punt returner, and blue chip QBs waiting in the wings, the coaching staff would have to prefer him out of the QB business. If the race is a push, Hartline should win all ties.

Which brings us to the other candidates. The Cats have taken the unusual step of signing two top notch QB prospects, Morgan Newton of Carmel In. and Ryan Mossakowski of Frisco, Tx. Both are 6-4. Mossakowski is said to have a cannon arm, while Newton is more of a dual threat. I did get to see Newton play on TV once this year. He looked a lot like Michael Bush did when he played quarterback for Male. He was bigger and stronger than everyone else, and bulled his way into stats, first downs and wins. Like Bush, Newton did not look to have a classic passer's throwing motion. Then again, he doesn't need to fit the mold of a classic dropback passer to play in our system. Newton was recently named Mr. Football in Indiana after leading Carmel to the state championship. I see Newton as a Curtis Pulley without the baggage. Of course, we already have a running quarterback with a great arm. That said, Newton can learn the offense, but Cobb cannot learn to be 6 inches taller.

Mossakowski's senior year went the other way. After having a less than stellar season to begin with, Ryan was lost for the year with a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder in early November. Between the need to rehab, and the fact that his bench press max was reportedly just 21o lbs. to begin with, I question whether Mossakowski can be a factor in next year's quarterback race. He probably needs a year to mature physically. But we'll see. Looking at all the schools that recruited him has me licking my chops. He turned down some great programs to come here, as did Newton.

Finally, we have made an offer to a JC quarterback this past week. After watching tough but abysmal Kevin Craft throw my UCLA Bruins' season away, I am really down on JC quarterbacks. In fact, I cannot remember one who has been successful at an SEC school. This isn't something I want to consider.

Whoever quarterbacks the Cats next year will face a pretty tough schedule. (Note that since this was created, we have filled in the late open date with Louisiana-Monroe. Also note that we will still be adding one game prior to the Louisville game. Presumably this will be an easy home win, though Rich Brooks has hinted that it may be a road game.) I am not a big fan of what our brass has put together. Rather than starting with a couple of cupcakes, we will have one undetermined cupcake, a bye week and then Louisville at home. The U of L game will kick off a stretch of 11 straight games. With how injuries effected this season, you'd think this would have been avoided at all costs. The schedule looks tough. The most winnable games will of course be the 4 non conference, at home against Mississippi State and Tennessee, and at Vandy and Auburn. The four that would be major upsets would be at home against Alabama and Florida and on the road against South Carolina and Georgia.

All in all, I'll go back to my original thesis. Next year's outlook should look about like this years' did. If the Cats can get some off season growth at the skill positions and sustain the losses well enough to field a comparable defense, this could be a pretty good team. However, if the offense does not find a way to put points on the board, and a couple of people turn pro early, next year might be a long one.

Early prediction: Another 6-6 finger in the dyke season which will serve as a precursor to an amazing 2010.

2009 Preview Part 1

I am doing a 2009 preview before the 2008 season is officially over. Admittedly, there are reasons why this is a bad idea, chief being that the season isn't officially over. We have an important game coming up, and next year's outlook could certainly change based on how the game goes.

My defense? Judging from the number of hits, UK Football Fan is on life support. It is too early to do a game preview and there is little else to write about. So, to keep the act moving, lets talk a little bit about next year. I'll even spread this out over a couple of posts. So, hopefully people will check it multiple times. While you read, would it kill some of you to click on a banner ad every now and then?

So that you don't get fooled again, know that the new boss is the same as the old boss. Next year's team will look much the same and will rise and fall with the success of its defense. As I alluded to in an earlier post, the strength of that unit will hinge largely on three young men testing the NFL waters. Trevard Lindley, Jeremy Jarmon and Micah Johnson have all presented paperwork to be evaluated by the NFL for their potential stock in this year's draft. This is a preliminary step that Rich Brooks has encouraged his players to take in the past. It doesn't mean they are leaving. Lindley would appear the most likely to be a high round pick and thus the most likely to go. A dirty secret about Trevard. After building a national reputation early, he slipped as the season progressed, most notably against Vandy, where he was toasted by a guy playing his first ever game at wide receiver.

Still, most projections have Trevard going as a second round pick. No one is guaranteed tomorrow in the NFL. My guess is that he will leave. There is less information available on Jarmon and Johnson's chances. Jeremy didn't have a particularly productive year, and sounds the most positive that he is coming back. Johnson says he hears that he would be a second or third round pick. That probably means he'll be a fourth or fifth round pick. Hopefully the NFL tells him that and he stays. Johnson is a potential NFL starter as a run blocker, but still has light years to go in moving those hips in pass coverage. Possessed with the heart of a lion, Johnson is my favorite player on the team. My son wears a #4 jersey on game days that I thought he could grow into by next year. Thus, I have a $28 vested interest in Johnson's decision. I really hope he sticks around and think he will.

So, assuming Trevard leaves and the others stay, that will give UK a nucleus of Johnson (ILB), Jarmon (DE), Sam Maxwell (OLB), Corey Peters (DT) and Calvin Harrison (FS). Winston Guy should step up as one corner, and Paul Warford is expected to return from a year of academic ineligibility to man the other. Shane McCord and Ricky Lumpkin will rotate as tackles, and Danny Trevathan and Mike Schwindel should battle it out for a spot at outside linebacker. Matt Lentz and Ashton "The Joker" Cobb will either start or provide depth at safety.

In addition to Lindley, the Cats will feel the loss of Braxton Kelly and Myron Pryor the worst. The defense had some rough patches late, but we never got pushed around. We had big guys filling the gaps and on occasion really punishing people. These two seniors were big reasons for that. Next year's defense will be more finesse. That makes losing a shutdown corner like Lindley especially tough.

Next year's defense will have to rely on a couple of karmic factors to perform on par or better than this year's. First, they need to avoid injury. Had this year's D not looked like a MASH unit each week, it would have accomplished more. Secondly, next year's D needs to hope the offense finds a way to perform a little better. In the end, our guys got run down, both within individual games and over the season as a whole. One of the many things keeping Rich Brooks up nights this year will be the loss of Tim Masthay. Time and time again he salvaged field position for our struggling offense and gave our D a fighting chance. He'll be doing so in the NFL (or Montreal or Frankfurt) next year. The D will need to gird its loins for another tough season.

Which brings us to the vaunted O. Lets end with the quarterback discussion and start with other things. The running back situation will be regrettably more of the same. We'll be relying on the trio of Derrick Locke, Alfonso Smith and Moncell Allen. Locke and Smith are speedsters, Allen is a bowling ball who runs hard and downhill. Unfortunately, all three are missing the elusive quality that makes an SEC starter caliber running back. Simply put, these guys don't make people miss. When the first guy always brings you down, and you play against the nation's best defenses every week, you aren't going to gain a lot of yards. Locke had some great games as a freshman, and has the best chance of transforming into the kind of player we need him to be. Of course, he will also be coming off of knee surgery and might not emerge as the same player. Incoming freshman Dakotah Tyler from Pike H.S. in Indianapolis has the best chance of cracking the rotation.

The running back position is a sore spot, but not nearly as sore as. . . .

Wide receiver. One hopes that a year of experience would have done the Cats young receiving corps some good. If so, I missed it. Kyrus Lanxter and EJ Adams appeared to be the best of the lot, but no one distinguished himself. Wildcat wide receivers combined for 1103 yards in receptions over 12 games, a paltry 92 per. Take Dickie Lyons and Randall Cobb (who combined got only 7 starts) out of the equation and the numbers shrink to 642 and 53.5. The Cats Pause is reporting that UK has a commitment from one of the top JC wide receivers in the country, Chris Matthews, at 6'5" 210 lb kid with 4.5 speed playing at LA Harbor college. I'm glad if this is the case, but recall that Steve Johnson, as good as he was, came to UK from the California JC ranks and basically needed a whole year to adjust. Any discussion of the wideout position must include pencilling Randall Cobb in as a starter if he is not the starting quarterback. Maybe Matthews and Cobb will prove a respectable tandem if someone can throw them the ball.

The line will lose Garry Williams but gain back Christan Johnson, who is recovering from injuries and academic problems. Overall, it should be much improved. Maybe it is the former offensive lineman in me, but I think this year's group was much better than advertised. They gave up very few sacks, and running backs in general and Locke's injury in particular contributed to the running problems more than most other observers seem to think.

This is the end of part one. Stayed tuned for a discussion about next year's quarterback competition and a look at the 2009 schedule.

Is 6-6 Half Empty or Half Full?

When this season began, I felt that the hallmark of success would be a 6-6, bowl eligible season. I scoffed at any projections that had us doing better. The Cats did not have much back on offense, and the defense, though reportedly improved, wasn't very good to begin with. I love going to my bowl games, and as of August 28th, the thought that I would have that chance again this year was good enough for me.
So why now, three and a half months later, does 6-6 feel like such a disappointment? That so many key players lost the season and games lost to injury makes the feeling in the pit of my stomach even harder to understand. Is it just because I am too selfish and demanding? Surely not. Here are some of the reasons for the dissonance:

1. The 6-6 record was obtained in the cheesiest manner possible. Only two conference wins, against poor teams, with both games coming by the narrowest of margins. The 4-0 non-conference mark, in retrospect, was totally unimpressive. I did not think that Louisville would be worse than it was last year. It was. The Cats got to a bowl without beating so much as a decent team. This isn't a real original angle (everyone in the Herald has mentioned the same thing), and moreover, isn't the true reason I feel the way I do. Here are more salient ones:

2. Paradoxically, the season felt disappointing not because we barely beat bad teams, but because we had chances to beat good teams and didn't. Georgia and South Carolina wins could have moved our program forward and instead slipped through our fingers. This stings more because the SEC was way down this year. Win against South Carolina, even with the losses to Vandy and UT, and we are probably in the Outback Bowl. Think about it.

3. We have watched many a defense struggle at UK over the years. God knows, few things were more painful than Hal Mumme's squads tittie tackling their way through the SEC. On the pain scale, however, UK's 2008 offense was Kathy Bates to my James Caan for most of the year. Which is to say, they had Mumme's Matadors beat. As a football fan, its hard to watch a team string together 3 and outs while seemingly running the same 4-5 plays over and over again. Watching a team with a bad offense is, for lack of a more artful description, no fun. We haven't had to do that for a while here.
(While I am bringing up Mumme, how is this for a parallel. Unconventional football coach comes in. Team takes unusual step of not tackling in practice. Team is glaringly unable to tackle during games. Coach sees no connection. Team ends up on probation despite not having accomplished a whole lot. Unconventional basketball coach comes in. Team takes unusual step of practicing hard on game days. Players suffer numerous stress injuries and appear tired at the end of games. Coach sees no connection. Team. . . ????)

4. The overarching reason why 6-6 feels like a bummer, though, is the way the season ended. With a Chick-Fil-A, and perhaps now in retrospect, Outback Bowl bid on the line, UK came out embarrassingly flat against a by then very crappy Vandy team. We looked like the UK era Kelenna Azibuike of football teams. "Here it is, take it, no really, take it. Oh, you don't want it? Ok." Seriously, how do you fall behind 24-7 at the half to a school not even 10% of your student population could get into? Oh yeah, you rough the passer once and the kicker three times. Vandy had not won in 34 days, including a home loss to Duke. Here are the yards that Chris Nickson rushed for against SEC competition this year: 17, 2, 40, -5, 39, 118, -7. Guess which one was that night? Fans froze their asses off, and the Cats decided to show up with an epic, all systems failure. If you think I am still bitter about this game, you are right. Then, with a week to rest, against the worst Tennessee team anyone can remember, the Cats fell into a wormhole. Playing a team that lost to freakin Wyoming two weeks before, our boys could not break triple digits in either passing or running yards.

Had these games have been our first two, with Louisville and Norfolk State the last, the season would have felt like a success. As it was, the Cats saved their two most disappointing, and arguably worst, games for last. Not good times.

The takeaway here? The Liberty Bowl is more important for us than our last two bowls. A win makes us 7-6, with our third straight winning season, the program still feels headed in the right direction. A loss, and the season is a losing one, and we will have dropped like a rock since the Mississippi State win that got us to 6-3.

More later with a preview of the 2009 team and our prospects. Expect to see the words season, success, hinges, Lindley, Jarmon, Johnson, declare and NFL Draft in or close to the same sentence.

Arbitration Arbitrary post

I have an arbitration tomorrow and have been out of town for the better part of the past week, so I have not had time to write.

Quickly, I swallowed hard last night and bought my Liberty Bowl tickets. Here is something to tide you over until I say more:

Memphis

It looks like,as always, I was wrong. The Cats appear headed to Memphis for the Liberty Bowl. Here are some quick thoughts.
1. Nashville and Vandy really get screwed in this deal. I would not be surprised if the SEC office didn't try to step in.
2. I am surprised that the Liberty has a preference for us. We have to bring fans a longer way, Vandy has proven itself a better team and has a better story. But if they prefer us and we them, I guess that is the end of it.
3. This will probably not be a very well attended game. UK brass may want to think about that before dissing the Music City. I know plenty of people who would make one trip but not the other.
4. Along those lines, I think this will be a hard sell on the home front for the me. Stay tuned.

UK Bowl Projections

Saturday's games solidified the notion that the Liberty and Music City Bowls will choose between Vandy and Kentucky. For the record, the Bowls will rank the two teams for preference. Assuming both pick the same team first, that team will choose its destination. That's it. I still don't see why the Music City would want a team from its own city, yet 4 of the 5 sites I've been quoting in my projections say Vandy will stay at home and we'll be going to Memphis.

These are the same sites that prefer sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum. (If you don't get this joke, you are under 33)

I've put in an e-mail to John Clay at the Herald-Leader to see if he thinks these people know something I don't. He has not responded. So I guess we'll see.

Lets pretend its our choice instead and break it down mano a mano.

Towns
Nashville is one of the south's best cities, if not the best. Great restaurants, great nightlife, great music scene.
Memphis is kinda dirty, and not necessarily in a good way. There is Beale Street, which cures a lot of ills, but it isn't a panacea. Unlike Neil Simon, I'm not going to Graceland.
Advantage: Music City

Proximity
Duh
Advantage: Music City

Stadium
LP Field is a modern NFL stadium with all the amenities. It is also huge and a little impersonal. If you have nosebleeds here, and I have, you are in another area code. It you are looking at Ticketmaster today, you see there are no decent seats left.
Memorial Stadium is reportedly a dump. That said, it is a smaller venue, the game never sells out, and right now you can still get seats between the 20s.
Advantage: Music City, in a tight one.

Game
The Music City Bowl matches SEC 6/7 (actually 7/8 with two SEC teams going to BCS Bowls) against the ACC 5,6 or 7. The ACC tie ins work about the same as the SEC's do. In the case of a disagreement, the Music City get the fifth pick. It looks like that will be North Carolina or one of a host of 7-5 teams .
The Liberty opponent will be the winner of the East Carolina-Tulsa Conference USA final. Tulsa is a 13 point favorite in that game. It also started the season 8-0 and up to #18 in the country before losing to Arkansas and gagging up a ridiculous 70 points to Houston the following week.
Advantage: Depends on your perspective. I'll pick the Liberty because it might be a winnable game.

The Hotel I have booked
In Nashville, it is the Hotel Indigo near Vandy. Not liking my downtown options, I went for a place a mile or so up the road. The last two years my friends and I have made this a one night trip, which makes for a nice savings. This is a hip looking place that I think we got for about $170.
In Memphis, there are no great hotel options for stadium proximity. The Zs and Scutchfields instead opted for Beale proximity with the Crowne Plaza Downtown (I think). At two nights at $200 per, it wasn't a great deal, but made the most sense.
Advantage: Music City

X Factor
For some reason, I find myself hoping we end up in Memphis, despite the empirical data above. I have enjoyed Nashville, but I've seen three games there in the past two years (including last year's UK-Vandy game) and would love to try a different bowl game. I've been to three UK bowls in my life, and each was a Music City. Also, seeing the Cats lose that Bowl after watching them win the last two would probably be too much to bear. I could be more philosophical about a Liberty loss.

Plus, there's always Tunica, a gambling destination as depressing as it is loose with the comped rooms, meals and drinks.

SEC Bowl Projections

Here are your now written in stone projections for most all of the SEC bowls. More on the Music City and Liberty in a separate post.

National Championship
Florida-Alabama winner

Sugar
Florida-Alabama loser

Capital One
Georgia

Cotton
Ole Miss

Outback
South Carolina

Chick-Fil-A
LSU

Only other possible scenario is the Capital One going with Ole Miss, sending LSU to the Cotton, Georgia to the Ouback and South Carolina to the Chick-Fil-A. (The Capital One must take the team with the next best overall record unless another team is within one game of that record. Ole Miss is the hot team, and it fits this bill, but I don't see it happening.)

The lesson here? Let's start with one 7-5 team playing on New Year's Day and another going to the Chick-Fil-A which is to say that this was an unfortunate year to start 6-3 and then not win another game.

More later.

My bad

I have not been able to do post mortems on the last two UK games. The Vandy loss took too much out of me and I didn't feel like writing about it. Saturday's game was tough, but if you read my pregame post, you know it was nothing I didn't expect. I wasn't able to write Sunday as I was driving home from Gulf Shores for 11 hours. Since then I have been too busy with work and am actually preparing to leave town again tomorrow.
So I am not even sure I'll be able to get out a SEC Championship preview.
I will post a very quick bowl projection doohicky and that may be it this week.
If I do not get the SEC thing out, look for a lengthy season wrap up some time next week.
Things will slow down after that, though I will throw in both a bowl preview and a breakdown of next years team prior to New Years for sure.
In response to an earlier question, I will not be creating a UK Basketball blog. I'm sure there are plenty of good ones, and I am so disgusted with the state of our program it would not be the labor of love that UK Football Fan is (or at least the labor of love it had been up until November 15th). I'll probably go back to writing on Scutch Speaks to keep the fingers moving, or may experiment with a more open sports related format. If anyone has suggestions about this, please comment or e-mail me.
In case you do not already know, Randall Cobb is undergoing knee surgery today to repair cartilage and is questionable for the bowl game.

Tennessee

Let me lay my cards on the table. I cannot muster much passion for the game today because I just don't like our chances. The Cats ripped my heart out two weeks ago by not getting it done at home against Vandy, and the wound was reopened watching the Commodores turn in a positively putrid performance against UT last week. The first half performance of both the offense and defense defied all notions I had about the coaching staff's ability to prepare and the character of the team. I'm still trying to figure out where our defense went. I have been playing the old "ifffin" game about the Vandy game for the last two weeks. A win was so attainable and would have been so sweet. Against this backdrop, we head to Tennessee to watch Phil Fulmer coach his last game in front of 106,000 faithful.

I'd look for a couple of things today. It is almost a foregone conclusion that the Cats will come out flat and dig themselves a hole. We are so used to doing so that if we can somehow stay in the game for the first quarter and a half, things should get interesting. UT will try to hop on us early. I'd look for a trick play, a fake punt, and most of all, I look for UT to go with Eric Berry at QB in a Wildcat package early and often. It has little to lose by going this route since passing has been such a Achilles heel.

I don't see our offense putting up many points so staying close will mean our defense showing up. Jeremy Jarmon is out for the game, which nullifies a lot of our chance to put pressure on a shaky QB. Pity that.

My guess is we will see Mike Hartline in this game at some point. It would help to give him some confidence going into an extra month of practice the whole team could use to get better. If he already has his head elsewhere, this will be a wasted month for him. I am still not sold on Cobb as a fulltime starter, and I don't think Brooks will be inclined to start another true freshman at QB next year.

Finally, I think there is a Lane Kiffin factor at work in this game. Reading between the lines, UT AD Mike Hamilton wanted to wait until after today to announce Kiffin's hiring. At some point this week, Kiffin started trying to hire retread assistants and let the cat out of the bag. I'm sure that the Volunteer players would love to send their coach out a winner. I wonder if the unfortunate timing of the Kiffin announcement will have the team turning the page a couple of days early. One thing is for sure, UT brass and their wonderboy new coach botched this, big time.

On a side note, UK's basketball win makes for a near doubleheader today on ESPN 2. I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing. Time was, our Basketball team did not have to settle for playing at midnight to get a game onto ESPNU and not even getting to play on the flagship station for a tournament final.

SEC Preview-Gulf Shores edition

I am coming to you from Gulf Shores, Alabama where my wife's extended family has a reunion every other year over Thanksgiving week. Weather has been great, not quite laying out worthy but definitely good for building sandcastles and the like. Much warmer than home, that is for sure.

My long drive and visit with the people here has convinced me of one thing. I'd never want to live anywhere other than the south. There are a lot of reasons. I think you know one of them. Free babysitting. But one other is the college football.

I view this weekend's SEC slate with a different perspective. After all, I am in Alabama during the Iron Bowl and surrounded by my wife's rabid LSU fan uncles and cousins. Should make it fun. Lets look at some of the games, starting with today's.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State face off in the Egg Bowl at 12:30. As rivalry games go, this one doesn't have much sizzle. Yet, the game has been played 104 times since 1901, and seen its share of fun. Last year, Mississippi entered the fourth quarter up 14-0 only to crumble and lose 17-14, putting the final nail in coach Ed Orgeron's coffin. Now the tables are turned. Sylvester "The Walrus" Croom is on the hot seat, though last week's win against Arkansas may have kept the wolves at bay for now.

Incidentally, was there ever a coach in more over his head than Orgeron? He should be a cautionary tale for any AD looking to quick fix his football program by hiring the "hot coordinator". Ole Miss got it right, from a football standpoint at least, this time. In contrast, I don't think Croom is in over his head, I just think he has a difficult job. The few remaining Rich Brooks detractors should think about how hard it is for MSU to string together even two decent seasons before poo pooing what Brooks has done here.

Today should be a coronation. Ole Miss hasn't been to a Bowl since the Cotton following the 2003 season. It plays for a return trip today. The Rebs have won four straight, including a beatdown of LSU last week. Jevan Snead is the real deal and should be throwing it all over the yard today. Speaking of Jevan, I'm glad to see he is now on Bill Simmons' Reggie Cleveland All-Stars list. I saw Ole Miss play for the first time about three weeks ago, and lets just say I was floored when I saw Jevan for the first time. If you don't know what I am saying, click the link.

Arkansas heads to LSU today for a 2:30 CBS kickoff. I'll dub this one the "Our former coaches are now coaching better SEC teams" Bowl. Let me reiterate that the family reunion is lousy with LSU fans. Ryan Perrilloux has been roundly cursed all weekend. Jenni's Uncle Fred put it best; "someone handed the kid the keys to the castle and he decided he didn't want them". I am not sure that LSU would have contended for the SEC title with Ryan, but I do know that terrible quarterback play has completely undone what should have been a very good team. Parenthetically, I've refrained from mentioning the five picks I saw Perriloux throw in a Division 1AA game a month or two back. Uncle Fred had another good take on LSU's season, "everyone, I don't care who you are, lets up a little bit after a national championship. Even Saban did it."

Arkansas has two quarterbacks named Dick and a coach that is one. Geoux Tigers!

Jesus, this is longer than I planned. Look what happens when I actually have time to write. Let's move to the two big SEC games on Saturday. (I'll have a UK-UT specific post out later today or Friday.)

Florida at Florida State. As between the Tide and the Gators, Florida has the tougher test leading up to the SEC Championship Game. If Urban Meyer's squad wasn't playing so out of this world, I'd hesitate to even call this a stumble game. Florida State is 8-3 and still playing for a lot. If Boston College loses to Maryland, FSU heads to the ACC Championship game. Playing at home against a team it hasn't beaten in several years, they should be out for blood. Still, I cannot see this being a great game. FSU dual threat QB Christian Ponder has had some good numbers against ACC defenses, but I don't see him getting off against Florida's. They'll put up some points, but won't be able to handle the Gator's team speed or Mr. Tebow. 42-21 sounds about right.

Auburn at Alabama. In contrast, this is a true stumble game. Auburn needs to believe that you can throw out the records when blah blah blah, because that is the only chance it has to win this. If you watch ESPN, you know Auburn has won this game six straight times. Here is another amazing streak of 6. ALABAMA HAS NEVER WON THIS GAME IN TUSCALOOSA, another 6-0 blanking that dates back to 18 freakin 95 (for 90 years, this game was played in Birmingham). As far as the current win streak goes, it is important to note that only twice did Alabama come into this game with a better team (2002 and 2005) and both times it was only marginally better. So the streak is only an indication of how far the Tide program fell in recent years. It is safe to say they are back. Is this the best team in college football? Probably not. But on November 28th, it controls its own destiny, the only D1 team that can truly say that. Lets also not forget, this game has Shreveport implications for our beloved Cats. ROLL TIDE!

Without going into every other game, here are a couple of things to look for as far as Bowl implications. A Vandy win over Wake combined with a South Carolina loss to Clemson might muddy the waters for the Outback Bowl. An LSU win combined with an Mississippi State upset over Ole Miss would send LSU to the Cotton Bowl, and could freefall the Rebs all the way to the Liberty if other things broke wrong.

Hope everyone had a good Turkey day. Enjoy the long weekend.

Guest Clay Travis

As I alluded to earlier this week, author, Deadspin columnist, lifelong UT fan and fellow attorney Clay Travis agreed to answer some questions I posed this week about UT, the upcoming game between our squads and the SEC in general. The answers are certainly better than the questions, and it was fun to get his insight. If you are looking for a way to pass the time between the college football regular season and the bowl games, pick up his book Dixieland Delight. It is a must read for any young man (or woman, really) who is a fan of SEC football. I appreciate Clay (who I do not know personally at all and agreed to do this based on an out of the blue e-mail) agreeing to participate, especially since I was pretty upfront about how few people are actually reading.


Some columnists are making noise that the Tennessee job may scare top coaches away. Expectations are high, and the SEC East is a hornet's nest to step into. You are the AD. What is your pitch?
Tennessee has the biggest stadium, the best facilities in the country, is the only national program in the SEC (defined as playing a national schedule and recruiting as such), and plays in the best conference in America. So Tennessee recruits itself. Now, that doesn't mean a coach won't have to work hard to get the best players, but we don't need to turn water into wine here. We just need to point out what already exists. If any coach can't see that pretty quickly then I don't think they need to be in Knoxville.

Despite the letdown against Wyoming, Phil Fulmer reportedly has the support/sympathy of his team and many at the school. What is Volunteer nation's overall feeling?
Phil Fulmer is a fatherlike figure. Watching him cry at the press conference was like watching your dad cry. People are sympathetic and like him. But they don't like him enough to keep losing to Florida. I think the vast majority of fans felt like it was time for a change.

It cannot be explained by superior talent alone or else UK would have many such streaks, so how exactly does a school beat another 23 years in a row?
I have a ton of UK friends who are my age (29) and can't even remember a time when UK beat Tennessee. Neither can I. Three things jump out at me about this streak:
1. Tennessee is typically better. How many times out of these 23 games has Kentucky been favored? Maybe once (2007 by a point or so, I can't remember but I know that line was close)...maybe not at all. Compare that to how many times UT has been a double-digit favorite. 2. Tennessee, perhaps more importantly, is typically deeper. By the time this game gets played in late November (for most of these years it was the final game of the season for both teams) attrition has eliminated some of UK's best players. I think the scheduling differential exacerbates the talent differential. (ed:this is a crazy good point)
3. There's something to be said for the idea of losing not entering into UT's players heads. Psychologically they expect to win and don't even think they might lose. In a close game this can be pretty significant.

Who is the one player Cats should ought to fear the most?
Eric Berry. I think he's the best defensive player in the country. He plays defense and he might be UT's best offensive threat this season. Even while playing defense. This is not hyperbole. If he gets a pick against the Cats he'll set the all-time record for NCAA interception return yards. As a sophomore. He's a Heisman candidate next year if UT has a decent season. I really believe that.

UT looked good manhandling bowl bound Vandy on Saturday, which has me wondering; was this season's failure the result of a lack of talent, schematic problems, or just an unfortunate series of events? Even as a huge UCLA fan (I went there for undergrad) I have to say that was the flukeiest loss a team could have. Did that game just set a bad tone that the Vols couldn't shake?
Looked good? Would we have had to pass for 15 yards instead of 21 to look bad? I thought our offense looked positively antediluvian. Each week we've gotten worse on offense.
You're right though, the UCLA loss was crushing. In particular because I think Jonathan Crompton never settled down and played like UT expected him to play at quarterback. From then on he was pressing.
Talent isn't the issue. Dave Clawson's offense is. UT's defense has played well enough to win the SEC. Truly. The offense has not played well enough to win a state football championship. As a result Dave Clawson's offense has to go down in history, and I truly believe this, as one of the most epic failures in SEC coaching history. This is an offense that was one of the tops in the league last season and returned everyone: the whole line, the top six receivers, the top three running backs. The only change was Erik Ainge leaving. No one foresaw this offensive failure. No one.

A weird year in the SEC, with few traditional powers having down years. Was this truly a down year, or just a testament to how much better Florida, Georgia and Alabama were than everyone else?
I think what we're seeing is that as the SEC becomes more NFL-like in terms of top to bottom competition (everyone keeps getting better) each year. So quarterback play, just like the NFL, becomes more important than ever and determines who is truly good. Look at the SEC this year. Alabama, Florida, Ole Miss, and Georgia all have proven/good quarterbacks. After that there's a tremendous drop-off. The bottom 8 teams in the league have the worst quarterbacks in my memory and as a result those teams have looked bad at times. Next year could be really strange since Jevan Snead may be the only person coming back who is proven. Does that make Ole Miss an early favorite in the SEC West? Amazingly, yes.

Have you had a chance to visit Lexington in October since your book was written? You really should.
No, I haven't. I've been on the road now for three consecutive seasons. 2006 for Dixieland Delight, 2007 for the book tour, 2008 for the new one that I'm writing, On Rocky Top, and now I'll be on the road again, probably, for the book tour in 2009. So the fall has been pretty tight. I'll get up there sometime. I promise. Keeneland is calling.

Admit it, even as a UT fan, doesn't Rocky Top sometimes get old?
No, never. Every time I hear it, the hair stands up on the back of my arms and I'm ready to run through a brick wall. It never gets old. At least not for me. Now the girly wooo that has emerged? Well, sometimes that can get old.

This Just In

As I've been saying for over a week now, barring something unusual, UK looks like a lock for a third straight trip to the Music City Bowl. Ole Miss took away any hope of the Cats going to the Chick-Fil-A by handing it to LSU on the road on Saturday. We have nowhere to go but down now. Auburn is the only SEC team that could get bowl eligible, and to do so it would have to beat Alabama. In a separate but related note, UK could also fall to Shreveport if only one SEC team made the BCS.

How could this happen? Its not likely but let's look. Six conference champions plus Utah will assuredly play in the BCS. Right now, the other three teams would be the SEC Championship Game loser, a second team from the Big 12, and USC. A conference cannot send more than two teams, so there are several eligible (top 14 in BCS) teams right now that will not make it. The teams that could conceivably take a spot from an at-large candidate listed above are Ohio State, Boise State and TCU. Economics dictate that the Mid-major teams are out. So, basically Ohio State, at 10-2 and done for the year, is the only team that could upset the apple cart.

If Florida and Alabama get through this weekend unscathed, smooth sailing. A loss by one would not, of itself do the trick. Assuming that one team loses this weekend, but wins the SEC Championship, that team would go to the BCS Championship and the Sugar Bowl would probably still pick the other. If Florida were to lose out, it would be 10-3 and conceivably ranked behind Ohio State. Would the BCS take a three loss at-large team? It did last year, Illinois. That is the only time it has happened, though. I should also note that an Oregon State loss to Oregon would slide USC into the Pac-10 slot and, because Oregon State is not an at-large candidate, open up a spot. The SEC has yet another out, in that Georgia would still be sitting at a likely 10-2 and inside the top 14. A lot would have to happen for the SEC not to get 2 teams in.

The bottom line is to cheer for Florida and the Tide next weekend, eat some turkey, and book those Music City Bowl tickets. The scary part of this discussion? Whether UK wins or loses this week will probably make no difference in its fate. This is information a team that has come out flat in its last two games would be better off without.

More as the week progresses.

Next week's guest

This week UK Football Fan will have a special treat. Deadspin columnist, author and lifelong Tennessee fan Clay Travis has agreed to answer some questions about the upcoming UK-UT contest. Clay is a Vandy Law grad who, I understand, still practices law but also makes money writing about sports. I recently read his book, Dixieland Delight: A Football Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference. This book chronicles his travels during the 2006 Football season, where he watched a game at every SEC venue and concluded with a trip to the SEC Championship Game. Funny throughout and offering quality insight into the creature that is the southern male, it is a good read.

Clay coined the genius phrase "Bama Bangs". Bama Bangs are the Trumpesque hairdo sported most famously by Alabama QB John Parker Wilson, but originally brought to prominance by Wilson's little brother Ross and his Hoover High School teammates in the killer first season of MTV's reality show Two-A-Days.

In any event, I look forward to getting Clay's take on the SEC season, the upcoming game, and Tennessee's year.

Around the SEC

With UK having an off week, lets go around the SEC for a quick preview of today's games.

Raycom has UT-Vandy, which began at 12:30. I am actually more interested in watching this than I am the UK-Delaware State basketball game. (UK looks good, up big at half. They've finally found a team they can beat it looks like). Vandy is looking for gravy after clinching a postseason shot for the first time in 26 years. A win and they go into next week's game at Wake Forest with a good chance at the Chick-Fil-A Bowl and an outside chance at the Outback. This game has a couple of implications for UK. Vandy is solidly above UK in the pecking order after last weekend's win. That can only change if Vandy loses out and UK manages to beat UT next week. Conversely, it will be interesting to see how the Vols come out today. Obviously, it looked like they folded the tent last week with a loss to Wyoming. UT throwing in another stinkbomb would auger well for our chances next week.

The SEC game of the week kicks off on CBS at 3:30 with Ole Miss visiting LSU. For a couple of weeks now it there has been no fluctuation at the top of the SEC bowl picture. I haven't posted full predictions recently, in part, to avoid sounding like a broken record. Ala. and Florida to the BCS, Georgia to Capital One, LSU to Cotton, South Carolina to Outback. Ole Miss has a chance to insinuate itself into the picture today. The Rebs have won three straight, and LSU has not exactly struck fear in the hearts of men recently. An Ole Miss win would effectively take UK out of the Chick-Fil-A picture.

Florida host The Citadel. Nice scheduling guys.

Arkansas heads to Mississippi State in a game not even ESPNU would touch. Sylvester Croom looked like he had turned things around last year for the Bulldogs, finishing 8-5 with a win in the Liberty Bowl. Now he is fighting for his job. A loss here would be a nail in the coffin. Arkansas is still playing for a chance at a bowl, at 4-6 with LSU coming to town next week. A Mississippi State win today would guarantee UK its now all but guaranteed third straight bowl.

As I hit send, UT and Vandy are in a scoreless tie early in the second quarter. Tennessee is knocking on the door with 1st and 10 at the Vandy 11.

Enjoy your weekend.

No Big Surprise

The loss to Vandy has taken us off the Chick-Fil-A Bowl's shortlist as described by Bowl Chair Leeman Bennett in his blog.

Bowl Notes while watching UK B-Ball Lose

Time to dispel a couple of myths.
1. UK might be 6-6. South Carolina was 6-6 last year and didn't get to go to a bowl. We may not go to a bowl. Here are all of the things that would have to happen for UK to not go to a bowl this year. Auburn beats Alabama on November 29th. Arkansas wins out by beating Mississippi State on the road and LSU at home. The SEC does not get two schools into BCS bowls for the first time ever. One of those things could happen. Two would be incredibly unlikely. Three would be like Joe Bob Briggs' third jackpot in Casino, which ultimately led to Sam's downfall. The odds against it are infinitesimal. It just cannot happen.

2. The Music City Bowl will not take UK for a third straight year. Hogwash. This isn't about spreading the wealth or getting bored. It isn't even about what the teams in the SEC want. Its about money. Making some pretty standard assumptions about the close of the season, chances are the Chick-Fil-A Bowl will be picking between Vandy and Ole Miss. Whoever is left will likely be in a Liberty/Music City hotchpot with UK. Oxford, Mississippi is an hour and a half from Memphis. You cannot throw a rock in Memphis without hitting an Ole Miss grad. The Liberty will have a clear preference for them. Conversely, it is unlikely that the Music City Bowl would want Vanderbilt for its game. They'd be leaving so many hotel rooms open that bowl committee members would not be able to show their faces at Nashville charity events or masquerade parties where the piano players play blindfolded for a year. Actually, that is not a well constructed joke since no one shows his face at a masquerade party. Anywho. . . . .

None of this is to say that UK is really a lock for the Music City Bowl. Other things could happen. If Auburn or Arkansas get bowl eligible, things get dicey. Auburn is admittedly a long shot. Arkansas, one never knows. It should win next week against Miss. St. A home date at LSU ends the season. Don't forget, if Arkansas doesn't upset LSU in triple overtime in the last week of last year's SEC regular season, UK is probably in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. Arkansas obviously doesn't have the team it did last year, but then again, neither does LSU. If Arkansas wins out and we end up losing to UT, that could be our ticket to Shreveport.

Also, I could be overestimating the extent to which the Music City would be repelled by Vandy. It has a national reputation and alumni spread out all over. Maybe the city would see the team's first bowl in 26 years and some sort of super homecoming. We'll see.

3. Billy Gillespie coaches basketball. A total fallacy. I'm watching ten talented guys on the floor, five of whom appear to run an offense, talk to one another, play defense and avoid committing silly turnovers for fear of being taken out of the game. The other five, not so much. One of these teams has been practicing together for a month. The other seems like a group of guys who met at the gym and called next. I digress.

On a final note, since I predicted the final record of every SEC final team three weeks ago I am a whopping 17-1 on picking games involving an SEC team. The only miss I have is UT's loss to Wyoming. It is all written down on a sheet. If you don't believe me, you can glean most of my close picks by reviewing that post.

Bowl Projections

As expected, UK took a tumble in the bowl projections this week. At this point, we can only tumble so far, as I'll explain in the next post. For reasons I'll explain, UK is a virtual lock for a third trip to the Music City Bowl unless something nasty happens. Which is to say that I disagree with the majority of these projections. For what the opinions other than mine are worth, here are your projections.

ESPN Schlabach
Music City v. Wake

ESPN Feldman
Music City v. Florida State

NBC
Liberty v. Tulsa

CBS Sportsline
Liberty v. Houston

CFN Scout
Chick-Fil-A v. North Carolina

Tennesse Game Picked Up

The UK-UT game on November 29th has been picked up by The Deuce! (Does ESPN2 still call itself that?) It will air at 6:30pm est.

There is one good thing about . . .

. . .writing something just for the hell of it. It is being free to decide I just don't want to talk about it right now. Judging from the number of hits I got today, people don't want to read about it either. Which I totally respect.

Logic 31

At the end of my less than stellar UCLA academic career, I needed to pass Logic 31 to finish school and not come back to LA for a new quarter in the fall. It was a seemingly simple task. L31 was a lower division class, filled with younger kids who were not Logic majors. I was fairly bright, a senior, and only about 10% of the class failed lower division liberal arts classes. Moreover, in four years of school to that point, I had failed exactly one class. Let's just say the "not pass" had happened in a manner so spectacular that the results could not have been deliberately replicated. So, failing Logic 31 and not being able to leave school was the furthest thing from my mind.

There were complications, though. My friend Joe talked me into transferring to L31 to fill a requirement we both needed to graduate. We started in an upper division Stats class that would have fit the bill, but left when a group of students in the 20 person class laughed and asked what we were doing there. We walked out before the German TA who taught the class showed up. The Stats class, for all its perceived difficulty and faults, met at 2:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It had final quarter senior appeal.

In contrast, L31 this was a MWF8 class, the likes of which I'd never before fathomed scheduling. Since every weekend at UCLA started on Thursday, Joe and I took it as given that we would attend no Friday classes. We would instead buy cute but studious A-Chi-O Julie C. coffee every Monday and Wednesday in exchange for Friday note taking. Unfortunately, most of my weekends at the time started on Monday, and I didn't make any 8 am classes, let alone those on Friday. Joe bought a lot of coffee that quarter. UCLA, for all its virtues, was not exactly an attendance requiring campus environment.

We soon learned logic was not a class you could BS your way through, which is to say it was outside my major. Tests consisted of 3-4 proofs, requiring 30-50 steps, and there was no partial credit. You either executed a proof correctly, or you got a zero for the problem. My first quiz yielded a zero. My second was not much better. With a week left to go in the quarter, I was practicing my $5000 speech to my parents about how I had to go back to LA for three months to finish school with no real plan for lodging. To take one class. Not good times.

Tomorrow the Cats face their Logic 31. Vandy is reeling. We are playing for the choicest rewards our budding program ever gets. The game is at home, on national television. Our crowd may be more sparse than usual, but at 8pm with all this on the line, it will be oiled and loud. VANDY LOST TO DUKE AT HOME TWO WEEKS AGO. Kentucky has finally shown some signs of life on offense, and with Randall Cobb at the helm should be able to move the ball and put points on the scoreboard.

In short, this should be a chip shot. But when a chip shot comes with a host of ramifications, it becomes much more than a chip shot. This is Logic 31, a small but thorny obstacle that has ruinous potential.

Strangely, these teams were in the exact same position a year ago when the game was played in Nashville. The Cats had six wins and were trying to improve their lot. Vandy was looking for a bowl eligibility attaining win. (You may have heard Vandy is 0-17 in such games since 1982). The game was ugly, physical, and chippy. We won, but having been there, I concede the game could have gone either way. Tomorrow will be nothing less. Yes, Vandy has lost four in a row. But Bobby Johnson isn't coaching a bunch of preppies who are going to concede this game. This will be a nasty, scrappy team. This team has beaten Auburn and South Carolina at home, and Ole Miss on Oxford. Lets face it, Vandy has three wins better than any one of ours.

In the beginning of the year, I counted Vandy as a win and hoped that we could split what I thought were the 4 "tossup" games. Now we've gone 3/4 on the tossups (Go Cats), and I want gravy. Despite its early season success, Vandy is who we thought they were. Lets get after it.

By the way, I passed Logic 31 with a hook plus and did not have to sleep in my car the following quarter (the long story is amusing). I have to think the Cats can do the same.

We'll be in the KET lot tomorrow. Starting early to stay warm. Go Cats!

This could tide you over until Saturday. . . .

. . .but most likely, it will not.

Chick-Fil-A Bowl Blog

The Chick-Fil-A bowl has really gotten into the 21st Century. Each week, the Chairman of its selection committee, Leeman Bennett, posts a blog about what teams are in the hunt, which games are being scouted, and providing insight into the committee's thinking. Today's post, which prominently features the Cats, can be found here.

If Bennett's name sounds familiar, here's why. A two time head coach in the NFL, he played football at UK under both Blanton Collier and Charlie Bradshaw, and was later an assistant for Bradshaw's infamous Thin Thirty team of 1962. (I didn't know this when I got up this morning, thanks Google). This leads me to wonder, could this guy have not lobbed us a bone last year?

Reading between the lines, it looks like UK is a/the front runner to take the SEC spot, but only if it takes care of business. He calls the UK-Vandy game the biggest on the selection committee's board this week.

Is there a better gig out there than being a bowl "scout"? Let's face it, 98% of a bowl committee's decisions are dicated by records, well established economics, and most importantly, the selections made by the games ahead of them in the pecking order. Yet, as we speak, fatcat businessmen all over the country are flying to great college football games and getting the hardcore VIP on someone else's nickle. Do they come back to meetings and say things like, "Bob, their crowd was really into this one. Plus, seeing Randall Cobb in person tells me more about the Cats than I could tell watching the game in my living room. I met several people who'll stay at the Ritz and eat at Morton's every night. I see dollar signs with these UK folks, Bob. I'm telling you, getting the Cats down here would be a great call". C'mon.

I'm not naive. These trips are about schmoozing with the ADs and University Presidents, not about "scouting". Still, being a bowl scout is a fatter boondoggle than being a summer associate in a large law firm. Which is to say, it is quite fat.

On a mission

I'm on a mission to determine the chances of the UK-UT game showing up on television on November 29th. It may be the SEC's best kept secret.

This is the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I will be in Gulf Shores, Al, with family. Assuming the game is not on national TV, I'm screwed out loud. My game experience will be limited to ESPN.com's deliberately outdated (to get you to pay Insider dollars) updates and an occasional scrolled tidbit from a below average ACC crapfest I don't care about.

Before you say "Raycom", forget it. Raycom is committed to the Egg Bowl in Oxford the day before. The heretofore mediocre but reliable network will have no Saturday telecast. CBS will televise the Iron Bowl, with what we hope will be an Alabama over Auburn SEC West coronation. Any other SEC telecast on the 29th will originate from the ESPN family of networks, and is totally discretionary. The SEC competes with all manner of other conferences for what games will be televised. The odds of our potentially irrelevant game getting prime consideration are shorter than Seth Greene.

If you thrive on trying to figure these kinds of things out, but have a life (I know, these venn diagrams don't actually meet), this becomes a problem. As much as I love to keep up with the SEC, keeping up with everyone else is impossible. I have no way to handicap whether this game will be on TV so that I can watch it. Given what might be on the line that day (or night, who knows) this is completely unacceptable. The best resource when faced with this dilemma is a random LSU blog that shows all nationally televised games and those yet to be picked up. I have to give this guy credit. He does his homework. If nothing else, this blog gives me a framework from which to base silly assumptions. That's good enough.

Hopefully UK beats Vandy this weekend, setting up a UK at Tennessee mercy fest on ESPN2 at 8pm on the 29th, riding bitch to UVa.-VaTech on the primary network. It must help that it will be Fulmer's last game.

These are the things an obsessive Cat fan can think about, in addition to contemplating the waxing of Vandy's candy ass.

Go Cats.

Bad Stat

Pat Forde of ESPN places UK as the 8th best team in the SEC, behind both Vandy and Mississippi. In doing so, he points out an obvious statistic that I've overlooked. Our two SEC wins have come by a combined two points.
UK is coming off of 6 good offensive quarters, a good showing against a ranked team, and is at home. Hopefully overconfidence is not an issue. The fact is, if UK does beat Vandy this weekend, it will stand as the season's signature win.

Someone's Parents are Paying Tuition

Bowl Projections Part Deux

Time for a little analysis on the bowl situation. It is starting to look like the SEC will have no more than 8 bowl eligible teams. As I mentioned last week, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, South Carolina and UK are in. Mississippi is a lock to join. Tennessee is the only team that is definitely out, but Arkansas, Auburn and Mississippi State would all have to pull off huge upsets to get to six wins. Vandy has to get one win, against us, Tennessee (at home) or Wake Forest.
If this doesn't materialize, the SEC could have only 7 teams in the mix, after having 10 last year. This would cause a lot of hand wringing among bowl committees, and would leave either the Music City or Liberty without an SEC team. Enough about the poor SEC, lets talk about the fortunate Cats.

Quick and dirty fresher course. Assuming the SEC has two teams in BCS games, the #3 SEC team goes to the Capital One Bowl, #4 and 5 to the Cotton and Outback Bowls. The Chick-Fil-A Bowl gets the next team. The Music City and Liberty then co-exist with the #7 and #8 picks. The Independence Bowl gets #9 and Pizza Web Site Bowl the tenth and final. If there are not enough teams bowl eligible, these bowls are SOL, and it appears this year they will be.

Only eight bowl teams means that even if UK does not win another game, Shreveport and Birmingham are out of play. If the seventh and eighth spots are held by UK and either Vandy or Mississippi, we'll be back in Music City. Geography. Vandy in Nashville might fill seats, but not hotels and restaurants. Ole Miss is an hour and half from Memphis, so they'd be the clear Liberty Bowl play.

If there is no eighth team and we are the seventh team, we would have our choice between the Liberty and Music City, in theory. However, the Liberty Bowl pays out $200,000 more to the conference of each of its participants. I am not clear on whether the decision would therefore be made for us by the Southeastern Conference.

Assuming Florida, Georgia, Alabama, LSU and South Carolina have the top five spots wrapped up, our competition for a spot in the Chick-Fil-A bowl is Ole Miss. Neither team really has the inside track. At 5-4 and 3-3 in the conference, the Rebels would seem to have the easier path to seven wins, but a tougher road to eight. This week Lousiana-Monroe comes to Oxford. The Rebs finish the season at LSU, then at home in the Egg Bowl against Mississippi State. So, barring an upset one way or another, Mississippi should finish 7-5. Oxford and Lexington are about the same distance from Atlanta. If the teams finish with identical records, Ole Miss will have a better SEC record by one game. On the other hand, Atlanta is the city most familiar with the level of fan support Kentucky brings. The Bowl Committee knows this.

The only other school in the mix for the Chick-Fil-A is Vandy, which could still finish 8-4. Provided we win Saturday, they are for sure in the rearview mirror.

If you dare to dream, a scenario could get us into the Outback Bowl. First, UK would need to win out. Given that Vandy and UT have combined to win one game in the last month, this is certainly not outside the realm. Then, the crosshairs fall on South Carolina. The Cocks are 7-3 with games remaining at Florida and Clemson. Clemson is a mess with no head coach, but did win at Boston College two weeks ago. Since South Carolina beat us head to head, it would probably need to lose both games for us to have a realistic chance at the bid. We would then have identical conference records, our overall record would be better by a game, yet USC would hold the head to head trump card. The Cats would be coming off two wins, the Gamecocks, two losses.

This Week's UK Bowl Projections

A look at this week's UK bowl projections. Analysis will come later.

ESPN's Shlabach
Music City v. Georgia Tech

ESPN's Feldman
Music City Bowl v. Miami (Fla.)

NBC Sports
Chick-Fil-A v. Florida State

CBS Sportsline
Chick-Fil-A v. Wake Forest

CFN Scout
Chick-Fil-A v. North Carolina

The plot has thickened and the plot is this: UK is in a race with Mississippi to get to Catlanta on New Year's Eve. Much, much more shortly.

Sunday Morning Nuggets

So many thoughts. Have to do it bullet style tonight.

* Yes, I was disappointed. I was Catatonic for a good fifteen minutes after the game. There are no more moral victories for UK football fans. After beating the No. 1 team in the country last year, we have to assume that all games are winnable. Especially when we play at home. This sucked, there is no question.

* That said, some might be tempted to deem the turnover with :46 seconds left, on the opponent's fifteen yard line "old Kentucky". I beg to differ. We didn't lose that game, Georgia won it. Demarcus Dobbs is 6'2" and 266 lbs. He jumped two feet in the air and intercepted a pass with one hand. Dude made a play.

*Watching Randall Cobb break down on the sideline after throwing the fateful pick was nothing short of heartbreaking. If UK did not have Randall Cobb on the roster, it would have lost that game by 30 points. Chin up kid.

*The Rich Brooks embrace of Cobb after this play encapsulates why college football is king. Right now, there are regular season NBA highlights flashing across my TV. How could a sports fan care about a regular season NBA game with scenes like this playing themselves out across the country each weekend?

*Winston Guy!

*The story of the game was the scoreboard. How in the world did we score so many points? How could we do so and not win?

*As usual, my pregame prediction was blown out of the water by halftime. Still, I had one angle of the game right, i.e. that we would struggle to cover both AJ Green and Mohamed Massaquoi with Trevard Lindley. Since Trevard was out for the whole second half we could not cover either one of them. This was the difference in the game.

*The stakes were a lot smaller, but Stafford to Green with two minutes left did look eerily like "The Catch".

*Now we know how Arkansas fans felt three weeks ago. As Bill Simmons says, this was a stomach punch game.

*A perhaps unfair rhetorical question surfaces this evening. What would our record be if Cobb had started at quarterback from the outset?

*Who is the freshman of the year in the SEC? Julio Jones and AJ Green are amazing receivers. They've put up good numbers. If I already had John Parker Wilson or Matthew Stafford on my roster, I'd pick from those guys in a heartbeat. With the Kentucky Football roster as it otherwise is, there is no guy I'd rather have shown up on campus this year than Randall Cobb.

*Tennessee's loss to Wyoming ensures a losing record, no bowl, and consequently that UK's trip to Neyland later this month will be Phil Fulmer's last game as Tennessee's coach. We would be the favorite if that game were played tomorrow. Knowing that a great many Vols fans are still in national championship winning Fulmer's corner, the finale will be an emotional day in Knoxville. Even if they throw in the towel at Vandy in two weeks (as they apparently did today), expect UT to be ready to play on the 29th.

*UT's loss, combined with Arkansas losing to USC, mean that mathematically no more than 10 SEC teams can get to a bowl this year. So, we've clinched a third straight bowl. If anyone gives you the "six wins doesn't mean we are necessarily in a bowl" crap this week, direct them to me.

*I can no longer project a loss to Vandy. Could we lose? Sure. But a betting man would go with the Cats, Cobb, and the pony backfield.

*Right now, I can find no reliable information on whether Lindley's injury will impact next week or the rest of the season. I'll assume that no news is good news.

*Alabama took care of business. The now set in stone SEC Championship will, barring an upset in the interim, be a de facto national semifinal. Penn State losing was a big relief.

*Your friendly UK Football blogger is searching for a parking pass for next week's game.