Kentucky’s New SEC Reality: Streak Teams Stay in World Without Easy Wins

The goal of the 3+6 scheduling format was to preserve traditional SEC rivalries. That is exactly the case for the Kentucky Wildcats. 

On3’s Chris Low beat the SEC to the punch. The league will announce each team’s schedule over the next four years on Tuesday night. This morning Low revealed the “permanent rivals” for every SEC school. 

Kentucky will face three former SEC East foes annually: Tennessee, Florida, and South Carolina. These “permanent rivals” will be reviewed after each four-year cycle and can be altered, but there probably will not be significant major shake-ups. 

Now that we know who Kentucky will play each year, what does it mean for the Cats? Let’s break it all down. 

Kentucky Misses SEC Layups

When Texas and Oklahoma joined the league, SEC fans immediately started playing the schedule game. The answer to the question, “Which team will we play each year?” was not an easy one, but there were two teams that everyone wanted to play, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. 

Kentucky did not draw either on an annual basis. There are two things to consider. 

1. Kentucky could play the Bulldogs and the Commodores in the same 2-year cycle. The part of the equation that gets overlooked in the 3+6 format is the 6. The rotating opponents will determine the balance of the schedule. There’s a chance we learn on Tuesday night that Kentucky will get both during a two-year stretch that opens the door for the Cats. 

2. Are both of those teams bad? Vanderbilt is a Top 25 team. Even though he may try, Diego Pavia cannot play forever, but Clark Lea has raised the floor of Nashville’s SEC football program. Meanwhile, Jeff Lebby has a Top 15 win on his resume in year two after knocking off the defending Big 12 Champs in Starkville. 

Kentucky fans obviously want to see their team get a favorable schedule, but in the modern SEC, it’s impossible to categorize any conference foe as an easy win. 

It had to be South Carolina

No matter how you played the schedule game, when projecting Kentucky’s three opponents, South Carolina had to be included. 

The Gamecocks joined the SEC in 1992, so they do not have decades-long rivalries in the league. Georgaphy has created a semblance of that against Georgia, but that’s about it. 

Outside of Clemson, Kentucky might be the Gamecocks’ biggest SEC rival, and that feeling is mutual. If either team wants to have a good year, they have to win this game. Kentucky rattled off seven wins in eight years during Mark Stoops’ best season in Lexington, but Shane Beamer has flipped the script with three straight victories, which is a big reason why he is the most successful head coach in Columbia since Steve Spurrier. 

Kentucky will play the Streak Teams

For Kentucky fans of a certain age, the names Florida and Tennessee are haunting. The Vols won 26-straight games over the Wildcats and the Gators had 31 consecutive wins before Stoops’ squad won in The Swamp in 2018. Even though those streaks are over, those logos generate nightmares. 

Mark Stoops has a ton of achievements at Kentucky, but his greatest success might be that he won four of six over the Gators. They’ll need to make sure that magic doesn’t completely fade away in the new-look SEC.  

It’s unclear what Florida will look like in the near future. Billy Napier is on thin ice that is melting in Gainesville. Even if they are down, they’re never out for long.  

On the other hand, Tennessee might just become a monster. Even if it doesn’t feel exactly like ’98, Josh Heupel has this program humming like Phil Fulmer. Kentucky avoided Georgia, Alabama, and Texas as an annual opponent, but they may not have dodged all of the top dogs in the SEC, thanks to Tennessee. 

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