New Bowl, New Team, New Coach: Same Results?
By Paul Jordan
The fourth bowl completed the set…now if I only had some friends to eat with for the fifth
Hello again readers, I apologize for my absence over the holiday break but I was off traveling the world and making love to literally dozens of supermodels at a time. It’s a tough life but I return with all sorts of new connections and tidbits of sophisticated humor to entertain your eyeholes. While traveling and talking to fans around the world about college sports and the bowl season in general I have come to a few realizations. First, there are to many bowl games. Out of the 32 played this year, only a small handful actually pique anyone’s interest outside of alumna of participating universities; and second, the later the bowl game is the more likely I will have nothing to do and will watch it. In case you haven’t been football’ed out yet, be sure to check out the GoDaddy.com bowl featuring powerhouses Miami (OH), winners of the MAC and Middle Tennessee State, 3rd place finisher in the Sunbelt….yeah. If the winner of the 9th best conference in football and the 3rd place team from the 34th best conference in football doesn’t scream “We couldn’t get anyone else to come” to you, then maybe you are one of those types that actually enjoys the BCS dictatorship.
I’m not here to complain about the BCS however, because one of the last ( and therefore most watchable) bowl games of the season is the BBVAC bowl featuring our beloved Kentucky Wildcats and the headless Panthers of Pittsburgh. With Dave Wannstedt recently announcing he doesn’t even want to look at a clipboard for the rest of year and the firing of their interim coach Mike Haywood”you pass the Advil?”, defensive coordinator Phil Bennett is left to head a team that has to be thoroughly demoralized by the fact that no one wants to coach them. All this seems to be a good omen for UK but this kid are high D-1 athletes from a traditional powerhouse and will be playing for pride; the playbook is already memorized so don’t count on too many errors like that. But what will history tell us about our odds?
2006 Music City Bowl v. Clemson (W 28-20)
Line: Kentucky -10
Highest ranking in season: Clemson #10, Kentucky unranked
Top Performer: Andre’ Woodson 20-28 299 yds 3TD’s
Final W-L: 8-5
2007 Music City Bowl v. Florida State (W 35-28)
Line: Kentucky +9
Highest ranking in season: FSU #19, Kentucky #8 (twice)
Top Performer: Andre’ Woodson 32-50 358 yds 4TD’s
Final W-L: 8-5
2008 Liberty Bowl v. East Carolina (W 25-19)
Line:Kentucky +2
Highest ranking in season: ECU #14 Kentucky unranked
Top Performer: Ventrell Jenkins one monster TD and stiff arm
Final W-L: 7-6
2009 Music City Bowl v. Clemson (L 13-21)
Line: Kentucky -7
Highest ranking in season: Clemson #18,
Top Peformer: CJ Spiller 125 total yds 1 T
Final W-L: 7-6
2010 BBVACCAVBB v. Pittsburgh
Line: Kentucky +3.5
Highest ranking in season: Pitt unranked, Kentucky unranked
Looking at the history (and current reality), Kentuky’s odd’s are pretty good. One thing we will need is strong QB play (looking for someone to step up here guys) and strong defensive play. Pittsburgh is in a state of flux and will be reeling, but Joker’s famously inconsistent Cats will have to come out firing if we want to celebrate 2011 with a toast rather than a “forget this night” shot.
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