Early UK Bowl Projections ahead of a Bizarre 2020 College Football Season

What’s the future of college football? Your guess is as good as anybody’s right now. For the sake of our own sanity, let’s say Kentucky plays a normal football schedule this fall. How would they cap off the season? Two outlets have compiled postseason projections for the Wildcats and they aren’t exactly the most glamorous locations.

In 247 Sports‘ July bowl predictions, the prognosticators project a matchup between Mark Stoops and his alma mater, pitting Kentucky against Iowa in the Music City Bowl. If I had a nickel for every time a college football writer predicted a UK-Iowa bowl matchup, I’d have at least a few dollars. From the outside looking in, each team is consistently around the seven, eight-win mark but is capable enough to throw in a ten or 11-win season every few years under the right circumstances.

Similar to the Music City Bowl projection, Sporting News foresees a Liberty Bowl date between Kentucky and Iowa State. The Liberty Bowl is not as popular of a pick among pundits as the Music City, but it certainly has accrued frequent flyer miles on Bowl Projection Airlines, even though UK has not played in the game since Rich Brooks was on the sideline.

In the likely event he season is not played out as planned, to keep the criteria consistent the NCAA has made a rule that gives FBS schools two automatic wins over FCS opponents that would apply to bowl eligibility standards without showing up on the record book. This means that if the Big Ten only plays eight conference games and a team goes 4-4, they are still bowl eligible.

It’s a wild, weird time to be a college football fan. If a season is in fact played, Stoops has enough ammunition to make Kentucky bowl eligible again.