Kentucky Football: 2021 schedule released, SEC Championship or bust

Kentucky holds off Louisville to finish the season.

Rivalry weekend across college football!

Kentucky and Louisville weren’t able to play last season due to COVID-19, which marked the first time the two teams hadn’t played in 26 years which really irritated both fanbases, and honestly didn’t make a lot of sense.

It didn’t make sense to me after Kentucky traveled across the south and Louisville up and down the east coast and not play a huge game for both programs who are only separated by about 80 miles.

Kentucky has flat out embarrassed Louisville in the last two meetings. The Wildcats have outscored the Cardinals 101-23, which has been two of the most dominant back-to-back performances in the modern era of the rivalry.

However, that was on the heels of the Cardinals winning six of the previous seven duels with Kentucky’s lone win a 41-38 victory over Bobby Petrino in 2016.

Louisville is coming off a disappointing season in Scott Satterfield’s second season behind the wheel, and the Cardinals vastly underperformed in a league that was held winless in the 2020 bowl season.

It’s hard to make of what Louisville did last year, my confidence isn’t high that they made any progression seeing as a team like Kentucky (who had trouble scoring all season long) was able to dominate one of the top teams in that league.

Nevertheless, I think the Louisville game now being the last game of the season has dramatically changed the impact of the game for many reasons. The first reason being that postseason eligibility can completely hinge on this game. How good of a bowl either team may get, or winning or losing can make the difference between getting or not getting a bowl invite at all.

The second important factor is when it used to be the first game of the year neither team quite had an identity yet, which I believe led the games to be closed when either team was good or bad. By the time the game is played now, both teams have an identity and a style of play and have had time and practice to really iron everything in their games down.

I think in 2021 the game will mean quite a bit more for Kentucky, but that doesn’t mean I think Kentucky can just show up and win like the last two meetings. If Kentucky were to come into this game 10-1 the postseason implications on this game could be massive. Kentucky football will have never felt pressure like they’d feel rolling into Cardinal Stadium as a top-five team in the country.

With it being a two-year hiatus since the two teams have met I think this game gets chippy. I believe Louisville will want to come in and prove they’re not “little brother” and there could be some extra-curricular activity on the field.

I think this game goes back and forth and will come down to the final possession of the game. I suspect it will be much like the “Lamar Fumbled” game and Kentucky kicks a field goal with minimal time on the clock and the Cats escape with a 38-35 win finishing the regular season 11-1 securing a date with Alabama in the SEC Championship game.