On Wednesday’s podcast we touched on football scheduling briefly, but I thought the topic deserved expanding some. With the SEC adding Texas A&M and Missouri, scheduling has been a hot topic of late. The SEC east and west will each have seven teams and conventional wisdom would lead one to believe that the conference will eventually move to nine conference games to accommodate this expansion. There’s plenty of debate as to how this will work though. On one hand, it only makes sense to play the other six teams in your division. To have a true SEC east or west champion, you would need a team that had completed the best season against ALL the other teams in their division. Not playing all other teams could create headaches that are unnecessary. For example, If Georgia and Missouri both finish the regular season with one loss in the SEC east and one loss in the SEC west, but did not play each other that season, who advances to the championship? So it can be assumed that six of the twelve regular season games will be spoken for. The complication of things begins past that. While Kentucky fans do not necessarily hold our annual ‘rivalry’ game with Mississippi State dear to our hearts, other east/west rivalries are much more important. Georgia vs. Auburn is one of the countries oldest rivalries, Florida vs. LSU is a game that annually has national title implications, and Alabama vs. Tennessee is one of the countries most heated annual matchups. Even though it may eventually be necessary for these games to cease continuing on an annual basis, you can bet many fans and administrators wont be happy about it. All this leads us to what could eventually be a nine-game SEC slate on each team’s schedule. While there is probably no team in the conference looking to add another quality opponent to what is already a “murderer’s row” in the SEC, perhaps no school would suffer more by the addition of another SEC opponent than Kentucky. The Wildcats are attempting to build the program into a more respectable entity, and opportunistic scheduling has been a big part of the increased success the Wildcats have had over the last decade. Kentucky and the rest of the SEC would all be forced to reevaluate their scheduling and decide how many non-SEC BCS schools they could keep on their slate.
So what do I think?
In the event that the SEC expands to a nine-game schedule, I believe Kentucky should drop the annual rivalry with Louisville from the schedule. Why? I’m glad you asked.
1) Its a no-win scenario for Kentucky
Its kind of like fighting a girl. If the wildcats win, it goes by with little more than a blip on the radar. UK is a team from the mighty SEC and even if the Wildcats aren’t a premier program in the conference, they SHOULD have beaten the Cardinals from the lowly Big East. But, if Kentucky loses the game, ridicule comes down on the Cats from local, regional, and even national media for having lost to their in-state rival. No matter what the Wildcats do, they will never gain enough from a win over Louisville to outweigh the negatives from a potential loss. The Cardinals on the other hand, can define their season with a win over the Wildcats. Like fighting a girl, its better to never even go there no matter the heckling you get.
2) Negative implications in recruiting
The Cardinals are located in the state’s biggest city and the biggest pool of high school talent in the state of Kentucky. Do you think Charlie Strong is utilizing the win over Kentucky this past season to sell recruits on Louisville? You bet your ass he is, and why wouldn’t he? The Cats are behind the eight ball with many recruits from Louisville in the first place with so many Louisville kids growing up as fans of the hometown Cardinals, so why worsen the odds by giving them a chance to boast a victory over the Cats? Again, this takes from the ‘no-win scenario’ listed above.
3) The Cardinals are NOT a quality opponent
Again, branching back to the ‘no-win scenario’ above, Kentucky doesn’t gain anything by competing in this game. If Louisville was a marquis team in the country and a win over them would propel Kentucky up in the polls and give the Cats some credibility, I’m all for playing them. The reality is that a win over Louisville will not get the Wildcats any points with the polls, but a loss will really hurt. I can see the point of Kentucky playing Ohio State, Texas, USC, or some team like that. If you lose, it’s no big deal because you were supposed to. A win though, could propel your program to a new level. In their current state, a win over Louisville means nothing on a national level.
4) Kentucky fans cannot handle losing to the Cardinals
Think about this scenario for a minute. IF Kentucky were to have played Missouri instead of Louisville this season and lost, would there be as many fans calling for Joker Phillips’ job? Most rational people would say no. A 5-7 season with losses to Florida, LSU, South Carolina, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Missouri is a disappointment, but probably not grounds to call for a second year coach’s job. But remove Missouri and add in Louisville, and the fan reaction has been much more hostile. In-state rivalries bring out the best and the worst in every fan, but again, I just don’t think the best scenario justifies the worst in this instance.
5) Dropping non-conference BCS teams will be necessity for most teams
A team like Florida might look at dropping Florida State, Georgia might drop Georgia Tech, and South Carolina could drop Clemson from their schedule to accommodate adding their new SEC opponent. With such rich rivalries on the chopping block, why would Kentucky vs. Louisville survive? The national media has shown that there is little interest in this game outside of the bluegrass too. If this contest matters on a national level, it wouldn’t be played on ESPNU, ESPN Classic or some other lower level channel. If CBS, ABC, NBC, ESPN, or ESPN2 don’t want to carry the game, it’s obviously lost its luster anyway. I think we’ll see less of the Marquis Non-conference matchups in the future as well, such as the LSU vs. Oregon or Georgia vs. Boise State games we saw this season.
So there you have my reasoning for removing Louisville from Kentucky’s future football schedules. Keep in mind that this does not apply to any other sports. Agree or Disagree? Let me know in the comments.