Preseason bowl projections have UK playing in Florida, Tennessee and ... Texas?
The college football season, at least for a few teams, kicked off last weekend, but bowl predictions were filed by media types well before the first tackle was made in 2021.
Kentucky enters this season vying for a sixth straight bowl appearance — which, if attained, would be a school record — and its fourth straight bowl win, which also would be historic. The former seems as much of a lock as something like that can be; UK hosts three “guarantee” games in which it will be a sizable favorite, travels to Vanderbilt — projected to be the worst team in the conference and the winner of exactly zero games last season — and South Carolina, which enters 2021 without a clear starter at quarterback and little in the way of outside expectations. If you give the Cats those five games, they only have to come up with one more win against a schedule that features four opponents that, at worst, look like 50-50 propositions: Missouri, (at) Mississippi State, Tennessee and (at) Louisville. They could go 0-3 during their brutal October run — Florida and LSU at home followed by a road trip to Georgia — and, in a best-case scenario, still be positioned for a second 10-win season under Mark Stoops.
Kentucky’s chances of just making a bowl seem incredibly favorable. ESPN’s College Football Power Index gives UK an 89.2 percent chance of reaching the six-win benchmark, the seventh-best rate in the league and right in the same ballpark as Ole Miss (90.3%) and LSU (89.4%). The better question is, “What bowl will Kentucky play in?”
Pick a favorite
After the College Football Playoff teams are determined, the Sugar Bowl gets first pick of whatever Southeastern Conference team it wants. The Fiesta and Peach Bowls could come into play, too, depending on the CFP standings, but the Citrus Bowl typically is the next in line to draw. From there, a group of six bowls with whom the SEC partners are assigned teams in coordination with the league and those bowl partners. Early projections have Kentucky in just about every single one of those possible spots.
▪ Over at ESPN — which has a role in the bowl selection process, too, as the owner of several and TV broadcaster of most — writers Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach last week both slotted Kentucky into the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, but against different opponents; Bonagura has the Cats facing Virginia Tech (whom UK defeated in 2019 when this Charlotte-based bowl was sponsored by Belk) while Schlabach pits them against Pittsburgh. UK hasn’t met Pitt since a 2011 loss in what was then called the BBVA Compass Bowl (now the Birmingham Bowl).
▪ The Outback Bowl, played in Tampa, Fla., is historically considered the “best” bowl among those six, and Jerry Palm of CBS Sports predicts that Kentucky will have a rematch with Penn State in that bowl on Jan. 1. UK defeated Penn State in the 2019 Citrus Bowl to finish 10-3, its best record under Stoops and the first time it reached double-digit wins since 1977. (For what it’s worth, I too projected UK to this year’s Outback Bowl, but with Michigan as its opponent.)
▪ Erick Smith of USA Today predicts a Gator Bowl meeting against Miami (Fla.), but that seems unlikely to happen because UK played in last year’s Gator Bowl, and the SEC lately has tried to avoid repeat visits from teams to partner bowls in back-to-back years.
▪ Brett McMurphy — who in 2019 reported that UK was Gator Bowl-bound following that season before some last-minute shuffling that put Tennessee in that game instead — has UK going to the Liberty Bowl this season, where they’ll meet Kansas State. McMurphy even included a projected spread with his guesses; he has Kentucky favored by four points in this hypothetical meeting of Wildcats. UK has played just once in the Memphis-based Liberty Bowl, coming away a 25-19 winner over East Carolina in 2009.
▪ College Football News also puts UK in the Liberty Bowl, but against neighboring West Virginia, coached by former Wildcat player and offensive coordinator Neal Brown. After playing home-and-home series throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the two programs haven’t met on the gridiron since 1983 in the Hall of Fame Classic Bowl; WVU won, 20-16.
▪ Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report also favors a UK-WVU pairing, but in a peculiar destination: Houston. He places both in the Texas Bowl, a relative newcomer to the postseason slate that started partnering with the SEC in 2014, and that was not contested in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the six games played since it partnered with the SEC, only one team from the Eastern Division — Vanderbilt (2018) — has played in the Texas Bowl, and at least one of the participants has been a school from Texas in every instance. Since its inception, the Texas Bowl has been played just three times without a school from Texas involved, and that hasn’t happened since 2013. The notion of Kentucky playing in this game can’t be completely dismissed, but recent history suggests it wouldn’t play a team from outside its borders.
Bowl projections are a dicey exercise regardless of when they’re conducted, but never more so than before the season gets underway. That’s why Mark Stoops was dismissive in his response when the notion of UK’s postseason expectations was brought up during a press conference midway through fall camp.
“Oh s---, please,” Stoops said with a laugh. “ ... I don’t even look. I’m locked in here. No concerns with that.”
