Contemplating a world in which UK football may not play Tennessee every year
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- SEC will shift to a nine-game schedule in 2026, risking end of UK-UT rivalry
- Coach Mark Stoops and AD Mitch Barnhart offer unclear signals on rivalry’s future
- Historic UK-UT series ranks among SEC's most frequent but faces uncertain future
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On Monday, at the initial Mark Stoops weekly news conference of the 2025 season, I asked the Kentucky football coach about the future of UK’s annual series with border rival Tennessee.
With the Southeastern Conference having recently announced that it will move to a nine-game league schedule from the current eight starting in 2026, SEC teams moving forward will have only three league opponents they will play annually.
It is far from assured that UK and UT — who have played in every season since 1919 except for the World War II year of 1943 — will continue as annual foes.
Two years ago, when the SEC was initially considering altering its football scheduling format as it prepared for Oklahoma and Texas to join the league in 2024, Stoops stated on his Oct. 23, 2023, radio show that the annual rivalry between the Wildcats and Volunteers would be ending.
Asked then whether UK was assured of continuing to play Tennessee every year whether the SEC adopted an eight- or nine-game league schedule, Stoops said at the 27:28 mark of the radio show that “Regardless of whether (the future SEC schedule format) is nine or eight (league games) or whatever, we will not play (Tennessee) every year.”
When I reminded Stoops of that statement Monday, the UK coach said he did not recall making it. He added that he had no idea whether Kentucky and Tennessee, after meeting this season at Kroger Field on Oct. 25, will continue playing every year.
“I can promise you, going forward, I have no clue,” Stoops said.
As a UK football fan, how would you feel if the Wildcats no longer face the Rocky Toppers every season?
While Tennessee has been Kentucky’s preeminent conference football rival for decades, the Wildcats do not necessarily play the same role for the Volunteers.
One would surmise that two of UT’s three permanent opponents in the new era will be intrastate foe Vanderbilt and longtime nemesis Alabama.
For the third spot among Tennessee’s yearly foes, Florida, Georgia and UK would all make varying degrees of sense as the choice.
In a statement Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart provided to WLEX-TV following the SEC’s announced move to nine league games, he acknowledged that the Wildcats had preferred the eight-game status quo.
However, Barnhart added Kentucky is “excited for the chances we have to play in the nation’s most competitive conference as well as maintaining our historic rivalries.”
Given that UK has no more historic rival than UT, that was an interesting choice of words.
A world without UK-UT football
Kentucky and Tennessee have met 120 times on the gridiron. Among current SEC schools, only Auburn-Georgia (129) and Mississippi-Mississippi State (121) have played more often than UK-UT.
Given how thoroughly Tennessee has dominated the series — the Volunteers lead all-time 85-26-9 and have won 37 of the past 40 meetings — it seems safe to say that no entity has caused more emotional trauma for sports fans in the commonwealth than the UT football program.
Even so, the Volunteers have long been the SEC opponent that most resonates with many Kentucky backers. So if the Cats and Vols wind up not playing every season, it will substantially alter the dynamic of UK football fandom.
Should Kentucky and Tennessee not remain annual foes, games with the Volunteers will not entirely disappear from UK football schedules.
Under the new nine-game SEC format, each team will face the 12 league programs they do not play every season at least once every two years and will play every one of those opponents home and away within every four years.
Given how little success UK has had vs. UT in football, one could argue that anything that shakes up the status quo is to Kentucky’s benefit.
While I have not seen scientific polling, my observation is that there is a bit of a generational divide among Wildcats fans in how the UK-UT series is viewed.
Among many of the Kentucky backers whose fandom formed before the Wildcats’ modern rivalry with Louisville launched in 1994, the Cats’ game with Tennessee is each season’s focal point.
For Cats fans who grew up with the Governor’s Cup series between UK and U of L, games with UT often do not seem as central to their Wildcats fandom.
Ultimately, it was the Southeastern Conference’s decision to do away with East and West divisions after the 2023 season that led to the shakeup in SEC football scheduling that has imperiled the UK-UT game as an annual event.
The idea in doing away with the divisions is for SEC fans to see all the league’s teams play more often than was the case under the divisional system (as an example of what is being “repaired,” Texas A&M has still not played football in Lexington since joining the SEC in 2012).
More variety in SEC scheduling is fine, but UK fans will not be winners if they wind up getting to see the Cats play Texas A&M and Arkansas more often at the expense of not playing border-rival Tennessee every year.
This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 5:50 PM.
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