Add Tennessee Tech to the 2025 Kentucky Football Schedule

The Wildcats are receiving a beneficial shift in the schedule, albeit one we will not see for three years. There’s a new opponent on the 2025 Kentucky football schedule, Tennessee Tech.

The fine folks at FBSchedules.com obtained an old contract signed in 2018 by UK that will pay Tennessee Tech $600,000 to come to Kroger Field Nov. 15, 2025. This completes Kentucky’s 2025 non-conference schedule, joining Toledo, Eastern Michigan and Louisville. This will be the second time Kentucky has played program from the Ohio Valley Conference. Bear Bryant’s Cats defeated Tennessee Tech 72-13 in 1951.

Why does the date UK plays an FCS opponent three years from now matter? Well, Kentucky hasn’t been playing their FCS buy-games late in the season. This fall Kentucky will host EKU in September. Typically, SEC programs like to use the penultimate week of the regular season to play the proverbial cupcake, allowing teams time to get healthy before rivalry week. In 2022 the warm-up for the Louisville game was Georgia. This year’s November schedule is even more challenging than last year’s.

• at Mississippi State (a place where Mark Stoops has never won)
• Alabama
• at South Carolina
• at Louisville

Even though this game between the Wildcats and the Golden Eagles is not technically on SoCon Saturday — two weeks before the 2025 season finale, close enough — it’s encouraging to hear the schedule is getting more balanced in the future.

HOWEVER, none of this may matter. By 2025 Texas and Oklahoma will be members of the Southeastern Conference. How the league will shift football schedules is still up for debate. It may cost the Cats a bank-able non-conference win.