Recollections from a Drearier Day

The destination the Cats visited the last time Ohio University traveled to Commonwealth.   It was the worst of times....it was the worst of times.  Just shy of one decade ago, the Ohio Bobcats visited Commonwealth Stadium, just as they will this Saturday afternoon. Kentucky was in year two of the Rich Brooks era, and the early returns were less than spectacular. The Cats had finished a disappointing 4-8 in Brooks' debut season, and had begun the 2004 campaign 1-2 entering what was supposed to be a feel good home win against the Bobcats.  It was not.  Ohio defeated Kentucky handily by a score of 28-16. The natives were restless. What that October Kentucky crowd lacked in size, it more than made up for in general bourbon-fueled surliness. We booed the team.  We booed the coaches. We booed the band.  We booed President Todd and First Lady Patsy Todd. The "Ditch Mitch and Rich" shirts were out in full force.  (Before the advent of Twitter, boys and girls, we relied almost solely on snappy t-shirts to voice our disillusionment.) Of the many dreary nights in the history of Commonwealth Stadium, that October night was certainly one of the darkest.  Those loyal Kentucky fans with sufficiently strong stomachs to endure the entirety of that game walked out of Commonwealth Stadium with a total absence of legitimate hope for the Kentucky football future.   There are parallels to be drawn between that Kentucky team of a decade ago and the current crop of Kentucky Wildcats.  Like Rich Brooks in 2004, Mark Stoops is in his second season at the helm of the Big Blue, and like Brooks, his early Kentucky record is not much to write home about. As was the case ten years ago, Kentucky will face a dangerous Ohio team in the early portion of the season.  But with those similarities in place, there is also a profound difference.  Unlike the early Brooks era, the early struggles of the Stoops regime on the field have not cast such a somber pall on the Wildcat program as a whole.  Instead, progress in the areas of facilities and recruiting, as well as the general belief that Stoops and staff have a definitive plan for the future, has created a genuine sense of optimism within the program.  The very notion that Kentucky would invest 165 million to renovate Commonwealth Stadium and the football practice facility, would have a top 20 football recruiting class, and would have fans truly believing in football success would have seemed ludicrous to the fans in attendance for the 2004 Ohio U. debacle.  Yet that is the state of the program on the eve of the Bobcats-Wildcats revenge match.   Make no mistake.  This Ohio team is capable of coming to Lexington Saturday and winning the football game.  In his tenth season as head coach of the Bobcats, former Nebraska head coach Frank Solich, who has 124 college head coaching wins to his credit, has built an extremely stable and competitive program.  Over the past five years, Ohio has gone 43 and 24, has played for the MAC championship twice and has earned a bowl bid each season.  For comparison's sake, our Cats have gone 22-40 over the same period.  And although many of Ohio's wins were against lower-level opponents, Ohio has been competitive against BCS conference teams during Solich's tenure.  Most notably, Ohio defeated Penn State in Happy Valley by a score of 24-14 just two seasons ago.  The Bobcats will not be intimidated to face off with a major conference team on Saturday.   I, for one, feel great about the Cats' chances on Saturday.  I'm going with Cats 34-17.  I am clearly not the only one that feels that way, as evidenced by the jump in the betting line on the game.  Kentucky began the week as a 6 point favorite, but that line has been bet up to 13 since it opened.  Clearly, a lot of money has been placed on the Wildcats in the wake of their impressive week one showing. But even if the nightmare scenario were to occur, and the Cats were to lose a disappointing game to Ohio, as Penn State did in 2012, I do not believe the dismay that emanated from the 2004 loss would be duplicated.  Unlike that time, Kentucky fans have seen tangible proof that the program is moving in the right direction.  The Cats' limitations appear to all be of the short term variety, with our future perhaps brighter than it has appeared since the days of Bear Bryant.  And for those of us who sat through the last visit from the Bobcats, that is truly a welcome change.