What can we learn from UK’s past 10-game football schedules? A lot, actually.
Kentucky in more than 100 seasons of playing college football has never played a 10-game schedule consisting solely of conference opponents. If the 2020 season begins and is played to completion — not a given these days — it will break that streak.
It won’t, however, be the first time the Wildcats suited up just 10 times in the regular season. It hasn’t happened for a while, but 10-game slates used to be something of the norm, in fact.
Starting with 1933, the first year of the “modern era” — here defined by the inaugural season of Southeastern Conference football — and lasting through 1969, Kentucky played a total of 36 seasons on the gridiron (it did not field a team in 1943 during World War II). Of those, 27 featured 10-game regular-season schedules. The 2020 campaign, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be the first since that stretch.
Let’s look back on those seasons from yesteryear to see how much things have changed and how this forthcoming season might compare. Here are 10 talking points with which to familiarize yourself:
1. Wins and losses
Kentucky’s all-time record sits at 624-626-44, a win percentage of 49.9 as it enters its 129th season of play. That’s slightly better than its total win percentage in seasons that featured 10 regular-season games (again, since 1933), which sits at 48.3 percent (125-134-13).
The most significant change since UK last played 10 regular-season contests is the removal of ties from the equation; the NCAA introduced overtime rules in 1996. For better or worse, its newest campaign to fall under that banner will have definitive results.
UK has actually had more winning campaigns (12) than losing ones (11) in those seasons (the other four ended in .500 records), but a brutal stretch in the 1960s bludgeoned its overall ledger. From 1960-1969 the Wildcats managed only two winning seasons (1960 and 1965) and two .500 campaigns (1964 and 1961). That was during a time when the league typically played six or seven conference games.
2. SEC marks
UK has finished with a winning record against SEC teams only seven times. Three of those occurred in 10-game regular seasons.
Two of those teams — in 1953 and 1954 — were coached by Paul “Bear” Bryant while the latest to do it, the 1964 club, went 4-2 under Charlie Bradshaw. Both of Bryant’s seasons concluded with significant win streaks — six in 1953 and five in 1954 — while Bradshaw’s started with a three-game burst out of the gate (including victories over No. 1 Mississippi and No. 7 Auburn) before a four-game losing streak derailed things.
All three of those seasons sported wins over Tennessee, none by more than six points. Each also included at least one victory over a program ranked in the top 15; rankings haven’t been released for the 2020 season yet, but at least three UK opponents — Auburn, Florida and Georgia — should be locks for the top 25. The Cats under head coach Mark Stoops have recorded five wins over teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25.
Kentucky only once has finished ranked in the top 25 following a season in which it played 10 regular-season games (1953).
3. League changes
The SEC we know today is much different than the SEC of the 1960s and prior.
By 1969 only 10 of the league’s 13 founding members — UK, Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Vanderbilt — were still in the league. By then, fellow founders Sewanee (University of the South), Georgia Tech and Tulane had all left, though Georgia Tech and Tulane weren’t gone until the mid ’60s (Sewanee departed in December 1940).
Teams in the league did not start playing uniform conference schedules until 1974, when the league adopted a six-game schedule across the board (before then, teams typically played anywhere from five to seven conference games). The SEC went to an eight-game conference slate in 1992 when Arkansas and South Carolina joined the league, and played such a schedule all the way through 2019.
Missouri and Texas A&M didn’t join the league until 2012. Before becoming a permanent rival in the East Division, Kentucky’s only prior meetings against Mizzou occurred in 1965 and 1968 (both wins). It had played Texas A&M twice before the Aggies joined the fold, in 1952 (in a rare 11-game season, before that became the standard) and 1953 (a 10-game campaign).
Oddly enough, UK has played more games against Tulane as a non-conference opponent than an SEC foe. The two met just six times in league play (four Green Wave wins from 1932-1935 and back-to-back Wildcat victories in 1961 and 1952) and seven times since, the most recent bout occurring in 1985.
On the flip side, 17 of its 20 contests against Georgia Tech happened as SEC foes. Before a 2016 bowl game, the two hadn’t played since 1960.
4. Common enemy
Fittingly, a return to a 10-game schedule should feature a familiar foe from days past.
Unless the SEC shakes things up considerably — and most indications are that it won’t — then UK will travel to Auburn this season, as it was supposed as part of its original schedule. After meeting only twice before, the two played every year from 1954-1971; in its 27 prior 10-game seasons, Auburn was on the schedule 18 times.
Those matchups heavily favored Auburn, which is 26-6 against the Wildcats all-time. In UK’s 10-game seasons, it is 4-11-1 against the Tigers.
5. Racial progress
While the 1960s weren’t too kind to UK in the record books, it was in the latter half of that decade that the Wildcats made their finest history.
Four Black players — Greg Page, Wilbur Hackett, Houston Hogg and Nate Northington — became the first to play for the university and in the SEC. Hackett and Hogg both were members of UK’s last team to play a 10-game season in 1969; both made significant plays to set up UK’s only touchdown drive in a 10-9 win over No. 8 Mississippi, which turned out to be the Cats’ only win over an SEC team that season.
It is now commonplace to see Black athletes between end zones; in fact, they make up more than half the total player base across the NCAA. The integration movement spurred by that UK quartet obviously didn’t put an end to racism. It was, however, a marker of needed progress, and the current UK football team’s support for causes including Black Lives Matter demonstrates a kinship with those who paved the path on and away from the field.
6. Home and home?
It’s farfetched, but we can’t yet rule out the possibility that the SEC could have its schools play an additional game or two against the nearest opponents already on its schedule to help alleviate travel concerns in the midst of the pandemic.
If that were to happen, and result in a home-and-home situation, it’d be the first time since 1945 that the Wildcats encounter such a scenario. That season — in which it went 2-8 — Kentucky hosted Cincinnati for a 13-7 win on Sept. 29 before traveling north for a rematch on Oct. 27; they lost it, 16-7.
7. Mercy kills
Scheduling sacrificial lambs to pad one’s résumé is more common now than it was back then, but it wasn’t exactly foreign.
In fact, if not for one such game, one of UK’s .500 10-game seasons would have been a losing season. It kicked off its 1964 season with a 13-6 victory over the University of Detroit (now known as Detroit Mercy), an independent that finished 3-7 that season.
UK is 4-0 all-time against Detroit, all of those matchups occurring in 10-game seasons (also 1959, 1962 and 1963). It won’t get a chance to pad that record in the future: Detroit, which claims part of the 1922 national championship along with Georgia Tech, stopped sponsoring football at the end of the 1964 season and hasn’t fielded a team beyond the club level since then.
8. First bowl
Kentucky’s first bowl appearance in school history occurred after a 10-game regular season.
The Wildcats defeated Villanova, 24-14, in the inaugural — and only — Great Lakes Bowl after going 7-3 in the 1947 season. That was Bear Bryant’s second season at the helm and saw UK finish with a 2-3 record against SEC foes (wins over Mississippi and Vanderbilt, losses to the ranked trio of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee).
It would be the only bowl game that Kentucky played in following a 10-win season. The Cats made bowls following the 1949, 1950 and 1951 seasons, all of which featured 11-game regular seasons (before they were officially allowed by the NCAA).
9. Way, way back
Even more 10-game seasons are in UK’s past if you want to go back to before the SEC was a thing.
The first? The year 1900, when nine of the Wildcats’ 10 foes were within the state’s borders (a road trip to Cincinnati was the exception). They went 4-6.
UK didn’t play a 10-game slate again until 1904, and it put together one of its best campaigns. It finished 9-1, the lone loss at Cincinnati, and recorded its first win over Indiana (12-0), which would go on to become a schedule mainstay in the late 1970s all the way through the mid-2000s.
Altogether, Kentucky played six 10-game schedules prior to the formation of the SEC. In addition to 1900 and 1904, they were: 1905 (6-3-1), 1909 (9-1), 1911 (7-3) and 1927 (3-6-1).
10. How tough it could be?
Since we don’t yet know two of UK’s 2020 opponents, making comparisons of schedule strength are tough, but based on the overall strength of the SEC these days, it’s safe to say this year’s docket will probably be as tough, if not tougher, than any the Wildcats have played since before the modern era of the SEC (here defined as the first season in which a championship game was played, 1992).
We can, however, look at the overall final opponent win totals of past Kentucky teams who played 10-game slates and use that as a starting point once comparisons can be made. Raw win percentage isn’t a perfect measurement — it doesn’t control for opponents’ opponents’ win percentage, for example — but if you consider those percentages, UK’s top five toughest historical 10-game schedules for which complete opponent records are available were:
1968: 71.0 percent (71-29-6)
1969: 68.0 percent (70-33-3)
1959: 67.3 percent (68-33-3)
1947: 64.3 percent (63-35-3)
1967: 63.4 percent (64-37-4)
For what it’s worth, Kentucky finished with a losing record in all of those seasons except 1947, when it went 7-3 before its Great Lakes Bowl appearance.
UK’s seven SEC holdover opponents from 2019, plus Auburn, finished with a combined 59-43 overall record (57.8 win percentage) last year. Using last year’s records, the toughest possible 2020 schedule would add Alabama and LSU, who bring last year’s combined record to 85-45, or a win percentage of 65.4. The easiest slate would see Arkansas back on the slate (as it was last year) along with Mississippi; that would make for a combined 2019 record of 65-61, or a 51.6 win percentage.
Of course, last year’s records aren’t this year’s records, and the true “toughness” of the 2020 schedule won’t be known until it’s completed, if it even is. There are so many variables — Will fans be allowed to attend? How will quarantines affect player availability? Will players opt out? — that trying to guess is a fool’s errand.
The fact of the matter: It’s gonna be a long, hard fall, regardless of how many games get played.
