Kentucky football fared well in new SEC scheduling format
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky retains annual SEC matchups with rivals Tennessee and Florida.
- New schedule drops Vanderbilt, adds South Carolina as yearly UK opponent.
- UK avoids annual games with Georgia and Alabama, both historical powerhouses.
From the Kentucky perspective, the new Southeastern Conference football schedule has worked out about as well as could have been expected.
The league formally revealed Tuesday night its new nine-game league schedule for each of its 16 teams. Under the new plan, in place from 2026 through 2029, each SEC team will face three foes annually while playing the other 12 league members every other year.
Of the three SEC opponents that have historically moved the needle most for UK — border state rival Tennessee; long-time nemesis Florida; and nearby Vanderbilt — the Wildcats will continue to annually play two.
UK keeping Tennessee as an every-year opponent is huge.
For all the anguish the Volunteers football program has inflicted on Kentucky fans — and with an 85-26-9 all-time mark vs. UK, UT has rained pain on Cats backers — the Rocky Toppers have long been the Southeastern Conference opponent that most animates the Big Blue Nation.
In a sense, Florida’s 31-game win streak over Kentucky from 1987 through 2017 elevated the importance of the Gators in the UK football galaxy. That has also made Kentucky’s four wins in the past seven games vs. Florida especially sweet for Wildcats backers.
Rather than Vanderbilt, UK has South Carolina as its third annual SEC foe. That removes the every-other-year trips to Nashville that UK backers in western Kentucky have especially relished. It also ends annual games in a series whose origins stretch back to the 19th Century.
Nevertheless, there are some merits to UK-South Carolina as annual foes. The Wildcats and Gamecocks have been playing every year since South Carolina joined the SEC in 1992.
As a series, UK-USC has featured a series of pendulum swings: Kentucky prevailed over South Carolina in five of eight meetings in the 1990s; the Gamecocks dominated the Wildcats 10-0 from 2000-2009; over the next decade (2010-2019), UK went 6-4 vs. South Carolina; and USC has a 3-2 edge so far in the 2020s.
If you despair over how Kentucky football is likely to fare with the new, nine-game SEC schedule, this will not make you feel better: UK has all-time winning marks vs. only four other Southeastern Conference teams — Arkansas (UK is 5-3); Mississippi State (26-25); Missouri (9-5) and Vandy (49-44-4).
None of them are among Kentucky’s annual foes moving forward.
Conversely, under Mark Stoops, UK is a combined 0-16 vs. Georgia (0-12) and Alabama (0-4). So Kentucky not getting either of them as an annual foe is a win..
When the SEC did away with divisions after the 2023 season, UK lost or will lose annual games with former East division foes Missouri and Vanderbilt and with Mississippi State, which was Kentucky’s permanent cross-division opponent from the West.
You will note that UK is losing annual contests vs. three of the four SEC teams it has a winning all-time mark against.
Rather than fighting to keep the Southeastern Conference from moving from eight to nine league games, perhaps the University of Kentucky brass should have battled to preserve the East and West divisions.
Starting in 2026, the four programs that will become the benchmarks for UK football are Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee — and intrastate rival Louisville, against whom Kentucky is contracted to play annually through 2030.
Those are the only four FBS teams Kentucky is slated to play every season from 2026 through 2029.
In the Stoops era, UK is 4-8 vs. Florida, and that mark could easily have been better. Of Stoops’ eight defeats vs. the Gators, four have come in one-score games. Nevertheless, Stoops is the first Kentucky head man with multiple wins over Florida since Fran Curci had four in the 1970s.
Under Stoops, Kentucky is 6-5 vs. Louisville and has won six of the past eight meetings. However, the Cardinals crushed the Wildcats 41-14 last season at Kroger Field.
Going into Saturday night’s game at Williams-Brice Stadium, Stoops is 7-5 against South Carolina. The trend, however, is not UK’s friend as the Gamecocks have won the past three.
Kentucky is 2-10 vs. Tennessee under Stoops. That is not good, yet Stoops is the only UK coach with multiple wins over UT since Curci had three between 1976 and 1981.
One of the most frustrating facets of the Stoops tenure has been that neither of the coach’s 10-win teams (2018 and 2021) beat Tennessee.
In the past three meetings between the Vols and the Cats in Lexington, UT has won by four, three and six points, respectively.
If Kentucky is ever going to make Tennessee respect it as a football rival, the Wildcats have to be able to protect their home field against the Volunteers. And UK, which is 2-11 vs. UT in the past 13 one-score games between the two, has to win its share of the close ones vs. the Big Orange.
Whatever else you may think of the new SEC football schedule, it has the virtue of giving UK continued chances to solve its “Tennessee problem.”
Kentucky’s all-time football record vs. the other SEC teams
Alabama 1-39-2
Arkansas 5-3
Auburn 6-28-1
Florida 21-54
Georgia 12-64-2
LSU 17-39-1
Mississippi 15-30-1
Mississippi State 26-25
Missouri 9-5*
Oklahoma 1-2
South Carolina 14-21-1
Tennessee 26-85-9
Texas 0-2
Texas A&M 1-2
Vanderbilt 49-44-4
* — Missouri claims a sixth win over Kentucky. But the team the Tigers beat 37-6 on October 22, 1904, was representing the school now known as Transylvania University, not the one now known as the University of Kentucky. The team representing the school now known as UK lost 11-0 at Cincinnati on Oct. 22, 1904.
