Who's goofy band is playing Lady Gaga?

Has UK been this bad for forever?

Anyone else watching this?

Somebody tell the UK defense the game has started

Something is wrong with the shape of the ball

Wildcat, what you did there, I saw it.

UK is terrible. Easily the worst team in the SEC

MAROON, we will not know till later in the season and we see if it is UK or Ole Miss. UK is playing a Top 25 team and Ole Miss opened with an FCS school. I agree in principle that neither school is expected to win their division this year. Keep in mind that while neither excel in football they will upset someone and spoil their run.

Last year UK knocked UT out of a bowl bid
Year before UK upset USC and knocked them out of a better bowl
Year before that they took out USC and UGA on the road
Year before that they went to B - D and left with a 14 - 17 loss to #2 Alabama

UK may not win, but they will cost at least 1 team a season.

They were very good whenj Bear coached UK.

quote:

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bat61

They were very good whenj Bear coached UK.

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They were good but not very good. he was at UK for 8 seasons and had 1 great season about midway through in 1950 when he went 11-1 and won the SEC on the way to beating Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl. The next best season was the year before that when he lost the Orange Bowl while going 9-3. In his 3rd year and 7th year (next to last) he only managed 5 wins. He finished in 9th place in the SEC 3 of 8 years and finished 8th in 1 of 8 years. that means he spent more time at the bottom of the SEC than the top. Folks just remember the 3 in the middle and forget the other 5 when the results were not so stellar.

I am sure Kentucky was happy to have him but he was not as good as he would become later in his career. I am not positive, but I think he never beat Neyland in his 8 years at UK which probably created friction with a fan base that viewed beating the Vols the same way A&M viewed beating tu. In his entire time at Alabama he had 1 year with only 5 wins but had 2 such seasons in 8 years at UK.

His record at Kentucky was 60-23-6 with three big 4 bowl appearances and two wins (Cotton and Sugar), one SEC champ and two SEC runners-up. That's pretty damn good for Kentucky.

And the story goes that Rupp got a caddy while the Bear got a watch from the boosters.

Perhaps urban legend, but certainly a believable story that illuminates priorities.

It's not an urban legend, but it was a cigarette lighter, not a watch. You can actually watch the two of them discussing it on YouTube. It was on the documentary that ESPN did of the Bear. Rupp appeared on Bear's show. Would google it if I weren't on iPhone right now.

It is a truth enhanced by storytelling

Bear at UK was good, but Bear at Bama was great

Rupp was winning NCAA banners
Bear was not beating Tennessee (imagine A&M never beating tu for comparison on job safety)

Seeing that they have only won one SEC championship since (and one co-championship) and have not even been to another big 4 bowl, much less win one, I'd say that Bear was great at Kentucky.

7thGenTexan,

The benefit of hindsight and a different system. Look at it if it was A&M playing SWC and Big 8 teams

Year #1 = 7 wins : Shutout loss to tu @ DKR, loss to OU, loss to UNL
Year #2 = 8 wins : loss to tu @ Kyle, loss to OU, loss to KU
Year #3 = 5 wins : 0 points against tu @ DKR, loss to KU, loss to BU, loss to MU
Year #4 = 9 wins : Shutout loss to tu @ Kyle, loss to SMU, loss to Idaho
Year #5 = 11 wins : Shutout loss to tu @ DKR, won your bowl game
Year #6 = 8 wins : Ugly shutout loss to tu @ Kyle, loss to KU, loss to CU, loss to UM
Year #7 = 5 wins : tied tu @ DKR, beat badly by tech, KSU, and KU, tied ISU, stomped by Uconn
Year #8 = 7 wins : won by a TD @ Kyle,
(ironic as this was the year UK played A&M and lost)



Look at it during the time frame :
in 8 tries you beat tu 1 time, and you drop bad games
the following year your replacement goes to DKR and wins
you are in the bottom half of the B12 for half of the 8 years
you are a very young coach with very little history

Would this coach still have a job at A&M?





Remember, back then the MNC was proclaimed at the end of the season and before the bowl games. That year both polls named Oklahoma as the MNC. This was a 3 way split for the MNC.



Oklahoma was named the MNC, but lost to Kentucky in the post season (both AP and UP named the MNC's prior to bowl season till the late 60's - early 70's)
Kentucky claims a MNC because because their only loss that season was to Tennessee, but they beat Oklahoma in the post season
Tennessee claims a MNC because their only loss that season was a single TD in the Mississippi State game, and they beat Kentucky by a touchdown late in the season

It is easy to see the bear of yesterday with todays eyes but it is not so easy when you go back to the original timeframe.

You can't compare those schools with SEC schools. Well, with the SWC you could back in the day, but most of those Big 8 schools have always been terrible, some even as bad as Kentucky.


A&M has a much better history in football than Kentucky. It's not even close. You once lost to your main rival 26 years in a row (remind me of how long ago that ended). We did more in the 80s and 90s than y'all have done in your entire history. We've had two bad decades in our history (and one of those would still be OK by your standards) while y'all have had two good ones in your history, the best of which is when you had Bear.

http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/sec/kentucky/index.php

http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/sec/texas_a&m/index.php

All-time rankings: http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/rankings/all_time_team_rankings.php

A&M - #18
Kentucky - #49

So the better question might be, would Mississippi State or Vandy - two schools with a better history than yours - be happy with those results?

I agree 100% that A&M has the better football history. What I was trying to get at was the dynamic for keeping a job based on a rival.

While UK vs UT is not as heated as it once was, is is still a strong border rivalry in all sports. Since UK did not beat UT in football for so long that part faded. What I was trying to do was use A&M vs tu as a "in your shoes" version of UK vs UT

Hence why I asked if a football coach at A&M could go 8 years as the HC for the football team and only win 1 of 8 against tu? I think Homer Drew was in a similar plight. He was one of, if not the winningest coach, and he got shown the door because he could not beat tu. Bear Bryant was in a similar spot at UK in that he could not beat UT. While the gold lighter story took on a life of its own the "donors" of the day were upset Bryant could not beat UT. The 5 win season the year before he left was not helping his stock at UK.

I was not implying Bear was a bad coach but he and Rupp had egos and Byrant was younger with less success. We can look back and laugh at the lighter story with the hindsight of Bear later on, but he had no MNC's and Rupp had 4 NCAA banners at the time. I have known for years that many coaches recruiting football against UK tend to use the "basketball school" thing (including Bear and Pat Summit) that is has merged the myth with the reality.

Got it, Mustangs.