Here We Go Again
By jeb
We’ve been avoiding this topic ever since we started making our sporadic contributions to this blog. But we’ll remain reticent no longer.
Despite our love of and frequent posts about the Other Football, our first love was and our true sporting love remains college football, specifically University of Kentucky Football and Southeastern Conference Football. No posts on the topic notwithstanding, our moniker can attest to that.
This is the most anticipated Kentucky Football season of our twenty six years. It’s the rarest of Kentucky seasons: one in which the expectations of the fan base are actually well grounded (well, most of them), one in which our starting quarterback is an All-American, one in which the Cats are actually expected to be a factor in the race for the SEC East title, the toughest division in all of college football.
Although these topics have received much attention from the local press, we concede, the No. 1 offseason topic for the Commonwealth’s journalists has been the fact that Kentucky and the University of Louisville will be playing in Week 3 and not Week 1 of this year’s season. And after a week in which the Commonwealth’s pundits directed yet another round of criticism toward the Cats, we can remain silent no longer.
But before we get to that, a quick disclaimer: we’re massive University of Kentucky fans. But like nearly everyone else, we enjoyed the game in Week 1. It was a fun and exciting way to start the season. But we’re homers; if our coach and players want the game in Week 3, then we want the game in Week 3. End of.
This doesn’t mean we don’t see the allure of the Week 1 matchup. The exposure that comes with playing the game on a weekend with relatively few premier matchups is appealing, and a program of Kentucky’s modest stature certainly needs all the exposure it can get. And the critics are correct in highlighting that if the game had been played in Week 1 it would have most likely been carried by ESPN or ESPN2 (albeit with the Leader’s C or D broadcast team – Gameday ain’t coming to Commonwealth any time soon) and available on basic cable. Moving the game to Week 3, of course, has resigned the Cats to ESPN Classic.
We understand all of this, and we understand that a compelling argument can be made that Kentucky woud have been better off leaving the game as the season-opener. We’re plrepared to agree to disagree on this. And we’ve done that.
But after enduring a week of cheap shot after cheap shot, we’re fighting back.
It started on Tuesday, when the same Louisville Courier-Journal columnist who authored this [link] gem of an SEC-bashing column (check out the part about SEC quarterbacks and try and guess which Super-Bowl-winning quarterback is conspicuous by his absence) once again took aim at Kentucky and its decision to unilaterally destroy College Football in Kentucky by moving the game [link].
In the opening, the author takes great delight in pointing out that there are some big games this weekend. Highlighting, of course, that some schools don’t require cupcake opponents before big games. This is no news to us, or any other college football fan, we suspect. And we agree; there are some great matchups. In particular, we’re eagerly anticipating Cal vs. Tennessee and the SEC/Big 12 matchups between Georgia and Oklahoma State and Auburn and Kansas State.
Our beef is that the writer can’t have it both ways. He and others who bemoan Kentucky’s decision to move the game have constantly said that Kentucky vs. Louisville would have been one of the week’s biggest games if played in Week 1.
But let’s not kid ourselves. It wouldn’t garner more national attention than Notre Dame vs. Georgia Tech, Cal vs. UT, the Bowden Bowl, or Virginia Tech’s home opener. Sure, it would most likely get more attention in Week 1 than in Week 3, but in neither week would it be college football’s premier game.
Next up, the writer lauds Notre Dame’s difficult start to the season. This bit seems odd; we like to make fun of the Irish just as much as the next guy, but we don’t see many comparisons between the Kentucky program and the Notre Dame program. We’ll note that perhaps the writer, in the interest of balanced journalism, should have also looked at the last four games the Irish will play and move on.
What’s next? The writer notes that not every school is scared of playing a rival in Week 1, highlighting the matchups between Missouri and Illinois and Colorado and Colorado State.
We’re thrilled that these schools prefer to start their seasons with a rivalry game. But if the reason for playing Louisville in Week 1 is to maximize publicity (and this is reason most often cited), citing these games doesn’t help that argument.
We’ve seen very little publicity about these games. Meanwhile, Kentucky has been featured on the front page of ESPN.com (twice) and CBS.sportline.com, despite opening the 2007 season against Eastern Kentucky University.
(Yes, we know the Illinois/Missouri game is on ESPN and the Colorado/Colorado State game is on Fox Sports — with a 10 a.m. local start! — but in our subjective opinions there’s already more buzz about Cats/Cards, even if it’s two weeks away.)
Finally, the writer takes a swing at the SEC. He notes that Ole Miss will play a rival, Memphis, in Week 1. He then makes this statement, which is either failed sarcasm or plain wrong:
I realize SEC teams don’t believe in out-of-conference rivals, but Memphis embraces this game with passion.
We would say the writer is just once again poking fun at Kentucky fans who argue that Louisville isn’t a real rival (which is lame, we admit), but since he and the CJ’s other columnist are always highlighting that SEC teams won’t play Louisville, we’re pretty sure he’s serious.
The Louisville writers never question Louisville AD Tom Jurich when he moans about how no SEC teams will schedule a home-and-home against the Cards, but this writer is simply ignorant about SEC football if he believes SEC teams don’t regularly play tough nonconference games.
Obviously, Kentucky annually plays Louisville. Off the top of our heads, here are the other annual nonconference rivalries: South Carolina plays Clemson, Georgia plays Georgia Tech, Florida plays Florida State, Ole Miss plays Memphis, and LSU plays Tulane. It seems like Tennessee used to regularly play Memphis, too, but we’re not sure they do anymore.
And that’s only traditional rivals. In the last two years, Arkansas played home and away against Southern Cal. (The Hogs nonconference schedule is a joke this year, though.) Mississippi State completes a home-and-away series with West Virginia this season. Vanderbilt played at Michigan last season and hosts ACC champion Wake Forest this season. Auburn has opened its last two seasons with Georgia Tech and Washington State, respectively, and opens this season against Kansas State before playing South Florida (who many, including the writer of the column at issue, are touting as the team to beat in the Big East [link]. This season LSU hosts Virginia Tech, Georgia hosts Oklahoma State, Alabama plays at Florida State, Ole Miss host’s Missouri, and then there’s the aforementioned Cal/UT game.
Does that look like a conference running scared of tough nonconference games?
Predictably, the other columnist at the CJ followed the Tuesday column with a piece on Wednesday once again noting that the SEC won’t play the Cards [link]. In the column, the writer notes:
Gorgia . . . is the only SEC program outside of Kentucky to agree to schedule U of L in the near future.
The best thing about this passage is that the writer noted earlier in the column that Auburn offered to play the Cards this year, but Louisville balked at the opportunity. So then, Georgia, Kentucky and Auburn (25% of the conference, if you’re scoring at home) have offered to play Louisville.
Another thing we don’t understand is why Jurich and those in his pocket only moan about the SEC. Is there some secret Big East agreement whereby its members are prohibited with contracting with schools from, say, the Pac 10 or Big 10? Why doesn’t Jurich try scheduling an elite team from one of those conferences?
The column’s quote from ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit indicates that it’s not just SEC homers who belittle the Big East, the Big East has a point to prove with the Big 10 and Pac 10 as well.
This brings us to Friday’s columns. After Louisville thrashed Murray State 73-10 on Thursday, the author of the Wednesday CJ column took another shot at the Cats on Friday [link], noting that you can’t fault Louisville for playing Murray State when they were planning on opening the season at Kentucky.
I’d take U of L to task, but what were they to do? U of L was all set to open on the road at a Southeastern Conference opponent, but that team decided it couldn’t get ready to play the Cardinals on opening weekend.
Let’s be blunt: this doesn’t make a lick of sense. Louisville will still play Kentucky at Kentucky. Quite how this impacts who Louisville schedules in its home opener, we’re unsure. But by all means, go ahead and take another shot at the Cats! We’re obviously the reason the Cards couldn’t land a challenging opponent for their opener at The Oven!
The author then goes on to question Kentucky’s football-related reasons for moving the game, noting that Murray State had success moving the ball against Louisville in the first half by utilizing a scheme similar to Kentucky’s. A columnist at the Lexington Herald-Leader wrote basically the same thing on Friday as well [link]. The implication being, of course, that Louisville will improve defensively by Week 3, and that Kentucky missed a golden opportunity.
As a rule, we’re more receptive to football-related criticism of Kentucky’s decision to move the game. Publicity’s nice and all, but we’d like to beat Louisville again at some point, which is why we have no problem with the switch in date. Arguing that moving the game won’t help us win it is more compelling than arguing that moving the game costs us publicity.
But, once again, it’s a case of critics wanting to have it both ways. As far as we know, and please correct us if we missed this, no one has written that Kentucky proved to be a much better team than the one that opened the season at Louisville last season. And that just maybe, the Cats could have at least made the game competitive if they’d had a couple of games under their belts.
And two years ago, when Kentucky was thisclose to pulling off a shocking upset against Louisville in Commonwealth, we don’t remember anyone writing that maybe the offensive line that gave up an absurd amount of sacks in that game would have fared a bit better against Elvis Dumervil and Co. if it was playing with a couple of games under its belt.
And certainly no one has been so bold this offseason to suggest that Kentucky’s rebuilt offensive line – Kentucky’s biggest question mark outside of Kentucky’s perennial question mark, its defense – just might benefit from playing two games before tackling Louisville. (Of course, critics have speculated that Louisville, with its first-year coach, will benefit. But not the Cats.)
Nope. No mention of any of these things. And, to be honest, we’re already preparing for another round of criticism in the wake of Week 3. Should the Cats lose as expected, we’ll be subjected to a barrage of ‘What was the point in moving it?’ columns. Should the Cats pull the upset, we’ll be subjected to “Think how much bigger this win would have been had it occurred in Week1.”
Alright then. That’s our moaning out of the way. We don’t want to be one of those bloggers that just rails on proper journalists all the time without offering any original thought of our own. But, as we’ve noted, we’ve spent the offseason enduring what seems like a weekly column rehashing (and rebashing) Kentucky’s decision to switch the game, and the time had come to add our thoughts.
Bring on Eastern Kentucky!
Onward and upward!
September 12th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
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