Navigating the coronavirus chaos will be Kentucky football’s task in 2020
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2020 College Football Preview
The Lexington Herald-Leader’s 2020 College Football Preview special section was published in the print edition on Sunday, Aug. 30. Click below to view all the stories from that section that have been published on Kentucky.com.
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Welcome to the abnormal.
That’s what it’s going to be, you know. Are you ready? You better be. Uncertainty. Chaos. Fingers crossed. Masks. Testing. Those are the buzzwords for college football 2020, a season we have never seen before and hope to never seen again. That is if we see it, of course. That is if the virus allows it to play through. Those are big “ifs.”
There’s no Big Ten this year. No Pac-12. No Mountain West. No MAC. OK, no problem. It is what it is. The college football field has been reduced from 133 to 76 teams. The Southeastern Conference plans to play. The ACC plans to play. The Big 12 plans to play. Ditto a handful of other conferences and even some independents. There will be football. We hope.
Oh yeah, we left out another buzzword. Adapt. It’s more like a key word. Those who not just survive but thrive in the crazy coronavirus grid campaign that will be the fall of 2020 must figure out how to adapt in our new abnormal, how to navigate the chaos.
In that regard, Kentucky appears capable of weathering the storm. Mark Stoops is entering his eighth year as Kentucky’s coach. His program has been to four straight bowl games. It has won the last two, beating Penn State in the 2018 season’s Citrus Bowl, then putting together a marathon eight-minute-plus fourth quarter drive to beat Virginia Tech in the Belk Bowl. Stoops’ current record: 44-44. You have to go all the way back to Blanton Collier, let go in 1962, to find a Kentucky coach with a winning record at the school.
Over the last four years in the SEC, Stoops is 16-16. That’s significant. Especially this year. If you haven’t heard, the SEC is going to play 10 SEC games this season. And only SEC games. Not only do the Cats play their familiar six SEC East colleagues, plus “permanent” foe Mississippi State, but Alabama, Auburn and Ole Miss are on the to-do list. Dates have been scrambled as well. Instead of visiting Florida on Sept. 12, the Cats don’t see Gainesville until Nov. 28, seven days after they visit Tuscaloosa.
How will the Cats fare? It won’t be easy, of course. But they do have an advantage. Continuity. The players know Stoops. They know his system. They know his expectations. Not a lot has changed. Eddie Gran is entering his fifth year as offensive coordinator. Gran has proven a master at adaptation. Look at last year. After Gran lost starting quarterback Terry Wilson and backup Sawyer Smith, he moved wide receiver Lynn Bowden to quarterback. And Kentucky won eight games.
The defense hasn’t changed much either. Yes, Brad White is in just his second year as defensive coordinator. White is a rising star, a future head coach. But Stoops has set the defensive foundation. Led by Josh Allen, Kentucky was sixth nationally in scoring defense in 2018. Allen departed for the NFL. So did key cogs in the secondary. No problem. At the end of 2019, UK was 13th in scoring defense.
There are questions, of course. Is Wilson healthy and ready to go for 2020? Is there a replacement for Bowden? Will someone step in for Chris Oats, the junior linebacker who will miss the season with an undisclosed illness? Is the program to the point where it can survive the grind that will be a 10-game, 11-week SEC schedule?
Then there are the unexpected questions the virus is sure to present. What happens when a player tests positive for COVID-19 during the season? If a Saturday game is postponed on Friday night? If the schedule is turned upside down? And how do you stay focused on the task at hand when there are so many other things to worry about? Like your health. And safety.
Welcome to the new abnormal that will be college football in 2020. We haven’t seen anything like it. And the hope is we won’t see anything like it again.
This story was originally published August 31, 2020 at 7:31 AM.
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