No matter how bad it got for the Kentucky football, you could always count of Vanderbilt, waiting there at the end of the season, to provide relief from whatever ailed the Wildcats. You always could depend on the Commodores for a “W.”
Usually you could mark it down as soon as the schedules came out.
Vandy was the only member of the Southeastern Conference to qualify as “one of them academic schools,” as Louisville basketball star Milt Wagner once called Drexel. The ‘Dores always had the highest collective IQ in the league, which, of course, was small consolations when an Alabama or an LSU was drubbing them by 40.
The university in Nashville usually was last in producing NFL players, but first in producing the doctors, lawyers, scientists, and leaders of tomorrow. But that, too, didn’t help much when Kentucky – Kentucky! – was knocking the equations out of their heads.
But something radical has happened in the last decade or so. Going into Saturday’s game against UK in Commonwealth Stadium, the Cats and Commodores now are dead even at 42-42-4 in their series. If the ‘Dores win, it would be their fifth victory over UK in six years.
You can either give credit to Vanderbilt for hiring better coaches, improving its facilities, and working some academic magic to admit athletes who will never be candidates for Phi Beta Kappa.
Or you can pillory Kentucky for not hiring a proven coach under the age of 60 since Bill Curry in 1990. Curry was succeeded by Hal Mumme, who was succeeded by Guy Morris. Neither was a proven head coach at the D-I level.
Then came Rich Brooks, who was 62 and in retirement when he took the UK job before the 2003 season. He was succeeded by Joker Phillips, who was succeeded by the incumbent Mark Stoops. Neither had been a major college head coach.
Whichever position you take – and the truth is somewhere in the middle – it’s frankly disgraceful that UK’s football program would ever consistently lose to Vandy. Just think about it.
While Vandy is a relatively small, private school, UK is a public school and the flagship of the state system. The Wildcats have more alumni and a larger fan base. The Wildcats send more players to the NFL and have bigger and better facilities.
Although Nashville is larger than Lexington, and although it’s the home of the country music industry, Lexington is the epicenter of the horse industry and has a terrific racetrack to prove it.
In addition, UK is like the other SEC schools in that it’s able to get athletes into school that Vandy probably couldn’t even consider. However, that certainly doesn’t explain Ryan White’s presence as the Commodores starting strong safety.
A native of Louisville, White played at Louisville’s Trinity High, where his teams went 42-1 over three years. He was a teammate of James Quick, now a senior wide receiver at U of L. Instead of getting White, however, UK took a chance on Jason Hatcher, the widely recruited defensive end who initially was leaning toward Southern Cal.
Hatcher got into so much trouble at UK, mainly due to a drug problem, that Stoops eventually kicked him off the team. He now is a senior at West Georgia, wherever that is, and still hoping for a chance to make an NFL roster.
Here’s what Hatcher told an interviewer:
“Looking back on my career at UK, I feel that I hindered myself with off-the-field distractions. I feel that I never got the chance to showcase my full potential because I never could get over the off-the-field issues.”
Holy cow. Is that a masterpiece of obfuscation or what? Off-the-field distractions? Is that what they’re called a drug-related arrest now? I did not seem an apology to his coaches or teammates.
But Ryan White is different. He learned to be a leader and a sure tackler under Coach Bob Betty’s supervision at Trinity. Now he’s in a third-year as a Vandy starter. He’s probably the best Louisville kid to star for the Commodores since Will Wolford, a future all-pro offensive tackle, in the mid-1980s.
Both sides are billing the game as “must win,” because neither has any margin of error if it is to become bowl eligible. Both the Commodores, in their third season under Derek Mason, and the Cats, now in Year Four of the Stoops Era, have 2-3 records.
It could be that Stoops is warming up the hot seat for Mason. Many UK fans have expressed anger over the huge buyout clause in the new contract Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart gave Stoops in 2013. If UK were to fire Stoops and his staff after the season, it would cost an estimated $18 million, according to some estimates.
But if the Cats don’t reach at least 6-6, can UK afford to not fire Stoops, especially with some proven winners such as Les Miles – fired by LSU a few weeks ago – floating around out there?
It would not be good for Stoops if he lost again to Vandy, maybe the only program in the SEC that UK used to look down upon. The Commodores used to be like the medicine you could buy over the counter at the corner drug store in Cynthiana, Harlan, or Mount Sterling. Take a healthy does of the black-and-gold and you were guaranteed to feel better.
But no more. Now Vandy has been upgraded from “sure win” to “must game.” The ‘Dores are really much more of a rival for the Cats than Tennessee, who has dominated UK for so long that the “beer barrel,” the trophy for the series, has been retired.
Whatever happens Saturday, UK fans can only hope that Ryan White doesn’t intercept a pass in the closing minutes and carry it to the end zone for the winning TD.
That would put Wildcat World into a whole new state of misery.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby