8 Days To Kentucky Wildcats Football: The Immortals

With another Kentucky Wildcats football season upon us, the staff at Wildcat Blue Nation are digging into their memory banks and recounting our favorite moments in Wildcat football. Over the next month, we will be looking at these games and sharing our thoughts and memories on them. It’s not a countdown, but a look back at what has made Wildcats football important to us and what stood out. Hopefully Mark Stoops and his staff will be able to add a few more special moments this upcoming season.

Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Flickr

Any true fan of the Kentucky Wildcats football program knows, there has been a lot of history that dates all the way back to 1881. With this long history, one would expect a vast greatness to emerge from it. However, as the Big Blue Nation so painfully knows, this has been far from the case. There might be a moment of excitement here, or a few years of mediocrity there, but there has been no sustained success for any length of time. At least, not since the now legendary Paul Bear Bryant roamed the sidelines of Stoll Field way back in the day.

Of course, despite the overall struggles that the program has endured, there have been some high points along the way. Just in this series done by the staff here at Wildcat Blue Nation, we have viewed 21 of them already. Today, we will take a large step into the past and view what is considered the best team to ever take the field for the Kentucky Wildcats. However, in order to get a true feel for the team that is being looked at today, we must step back to a time where the University of Kentucky was known as Kentucky State College.

All the way back in the late 1800’s, Kentucky State College fielded a team that transcends time. It was the ninth team fielded by the college, led by the seventh coach in its history. Already, it is clear that times have changed, as coaches were a revolving door from one year to another. With this instability, Kentucky only had two winning seasons coming into the 1898 season. Then, in this season, something clicked and the perfect storm happened. Led by head coach W.R. Bass and captain Roscoe Severs, Kentucky State College took on seven teams. What happened next was amazing.