There is only one way Kentucky football can end 2017 on a high note

This year, Kentucky football needs to win its bowl game.

That wasn’t the case last year. The Cats were just happy to be there. It was their first bowl trip since 2010. Kentucky had won seven games. It had upset 11th-ranked Louisville in the regular-season finale.

It would have been nice to win the TaxSlayer Bow in sunny Jacksonville, but the 33-18 loss to Georgia Tech did no great harm to the program. Being there was the accomplishment.

This year is different. The circumstances are different. Much different. After closing the regular season with blowout losses to Georgia (42-13 in Athens) and arch-rival Louisville (44-17 in Lexington), the Cats need more than a good postseason performance this time around. The Cats need a win.

Why? Saturday’s crowd at Kroger Field is why. The announced attendance of 56,186 was the smallest for a UK-U of L game in Lexington since the series got a re-boot in 1994. The previous low was 58,967 back in 1995, when 58,000 was the listed capacity of Commonwealth Stadium (now Kroger Field) before a 1999 expansion increased the number to 67,000.

Stadium renovation in 2015 reduced seating to about 62,000. But two years ago, when a then 5-6 Kentucky played host to Louisville in the regular-season finale, the game was a sell-out with announced ticket sales of 62,512.

You would have thought this year’s game would have matched that number. After all, Kentucky entered with a 7-4 record. It had gone 4-4 in the SEC for the second consecutive year. Louisville boasted the 2016 Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Lamar Jackson, one of the most exciting players in the sport’s history. And yet there were plenty of empty seats in the afternoon sun.

For whatever reason, Big Blue Nation has never truly warmed to this football team. You can see it in the audience numbers on websites. You can hear it on the call-in shows. Most of all, you can find it in the ticket sales. The Sept. 23 game against Florida drew a home crowd of 62,945. Of the other six home games, none drew more than 57,543, that for Tennessee.

Mark Stoops has made great progress in building his program. UK went 2-10 his first year. It has posted 7-5 records each of the last two. After losing 20 of their 24 SEC games his first three seasons, the Cats are 8-8 in conference play the past two campaigns.

This season, it featured a running back in Benny Snell who led the SEC in rushing with 1,318 yards, including a career-high 211 on Saturday. Over his final five games, three of them losses, Snell averaged 199.6 rushing yards per game.

These days, that’s not enough. Times have changed. More games on television. Higher prices for tickets. Beating teams you are supposed to beat doesn’t cut it with the average fan. You need to beat the big dogs.

Outside of that 41-38 win over Louisville last year, Kentucky has yet to do that. It caught South Carolina early in the season. It beat Missouri before the Tigers got hot. It beat the first Tennessee team in program history that went 0-8 in the SEC.

Conversely, it failed to stay on the field with the three best teams it played — Mississippi State (45-7), Georgia and Louisville. And the site of an undisciplined team against Louisville, and a coach who kept playing someone who had committed three personal foul penalties and one unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, didn’t help matters.

Neither did this: UK’s seventh victory this season — the 44-21 win at Vanderbilt — triggered an automatic one-year extension to Stoops’ contract, boosting his salary to $5 million in 2022-23, right before the Cats were blown out 86-30 in their final two games.

That’s what makes the outcome of Kentucky’s bowl game so important. Music City Bowl. Liberty Bowl. Belk Bowl. The destination doesn’t matter. Wherever the Cats end up going and whomever the Cats end up playing, they need a win.

This story was originally published November 26, 2017 at 4:38 PM with the headline "There is only one way Kentucky football can end 2017 on a high note."