You know who Kentucky football should send a thank-you card? Phillip Fulmer
When Kentucky football fans are doing their gratitude pages for the Wildcats’ stirring victory over Virginia Tech in last week’s Belk Bowl, they should start with a surprising person.
Phillip Fulmer deserves a hearty thanks from everyone who cares about UK football.
If you will recall, it was widely speculated in the run-up to the 2019 college football bowl selection day that Kentucky would be headed to Jacksonville to play a Big Ten foe — Indiana, as it turned out — in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl.
However, on the Sunday bowl selections were made, Tennessee apparently had a late change of heart about going to the Music City Bowl to play Louisville and instead stated its preference to go to Jacksonville.
Since UT beat UK head-to-head (17-13) and had a better Southeastern Conference record than Kentucky (5-3 vs. 3-5), the Volunteers unquestionably deserved to pick ahead of the Wildcats in the SEC bowl-placement process.
Yet by assuring that Kentucky faced a legitimate “football brand” in Virginia Tech in its bowl rather than an Indiana program that is one of the least traditionally successful of all Power Five conference schools, Fulmer did UK a massive favor.
Mark Stoops and troops handled the rest.
What Kentucky garnered in terms of program perception with its epic 18-play, 85-yard touchdown drive to come from behind and beat Virginia Tech 37-30 in Charlotte is infinitely greater than anything that the Wildcats could have gained by facing Indiana.
When a coach is trying to elevate a traditional college football laggard, there are two primary challenges.
One is raising the talent level.
The second is changing the culture.
On display last week at the Bank of America Stadium was the degree to which Stoops has changed the internal expectations of Kentucky football.
Against a Virginia Tech program with the longest consecutive-season bowl streak in the country (27 years), UK stood toe-to-toe and refused to flinch.
On a day when a well-designed Hokies offensive game plan gave the Kentucky defense unexpected (at least by me) fits, the UK “D” nevertheless held Tech out of the end zone on its final three drives, giving the UK offense a chance to steal the game.
Behind the remarkable Lynn Bowden and late-game heroics from Josh Ali, the Kentucky offense did just that.
If Stoops goes on to take Kentucky football to the proverbial next level, we will look back to that final TD drive that won the Belk Bowl as one of the definitive moments in the story of UK’s pigskin rise.
Conversely, had it been Kentucky, and not Tennessee, that benefited from Indiana’s late-game meltdown to score a 23-22 comeback victory in the Gator Bowl, the advantages gained in the realm of public perception would have been negligible.
That’s why UK football and its backers should send a thank-you card to Fulmer and Tennessee.
Judging from the back and forth on Twitter, there’s more “juice” in the Kentucky-Tennessee football dynamic right now than there has been in decades.
Since the start of the 2016 season, Kentucky is 32-20 overall, 16-16 in the SEC; Tennessee is 26-24, 11-21 in the SEC.
Yet to the massive frustration of Wildcats fans, in a period when UK has been the more successful program, the Wildcats are still only 1-3 head-to-head vs. UT.
It is a matter of indisputable, historical fact that Tennessee has pretty much always had Kentucky’s “number” in football.
The greatest UK coach, Bear Bryant, went 1-5-2 vs. UT — and the one win came after seven non-victories. When Bryant beat Tennessee in 1953, it was the Wildcats’ first victory over the Vols since 1935.
With one coaching exception — Blanton Collier, Bryant’s successor, went 5-2-1 vs. Tennessee; so, of course, UK pink slipped him — it has pretty much been the same ever since.
When Kentucky fell to Tennessee 17-13 this past season after failing to score the game-winning TD on two plays from within the UT 2-yard line, it made the Cats a horrid 2-33 vs. the Vols since 1984.
Think about this: Since 2016 UK is 1-3 vs. UT but 15-13 against the rest of the SEC; UT is 3-1 vs. UK but 8-20 vs. the rest of the SEC.
To be determined moving forward is whether Kentucky has “missed its window” to win games against a Tennessee program inevitably headed back up?
Or is the head-to-head between UK and UT actually a lagging indicator yet to reflect a new balance of power between blue and orange?
In the meantime, you know what would be quite the sporting irony:
If the confidence Kentucky gained from vanquishing old-line football power Virginia Tech in a bowl game UK would not even have been in were it not for Tennessee’s machinations eventually helped the Wildcats scale the psychological block they have long faced in climbing Rocky Top.
