The Kentucky Wildcats were enjoying their week off as everything else fell into place around them. It was about as perfect as a Kentucky fan could have asked for in a week without a Wildcats game. It was a chaotic Saturday with all sorts of upsets, even one of the greatest upsets in history, with Vanderbilt shocking the world by beating the number one team, Alabama.
What made it nearly perfect but not entirely perfect? Well, this truly depends on who you ask. It may have actually been a completely perfect Saturday of football if you are truly just a wonderfully joyful petty fan. Suffice it to say, hats off to you. Enjoy your day! Smoke that victory cigar of all your rivals losing. Down goes Tennessee! Down goes Louisville! Down goes North Carolina! Kentucky fans can only sit back and laugh. Don’t read the next paragraph if that is you, just skip it and enjoy the rest of this article.
However, if you are truly one of those fans who wants to handle your own business and understands the strength of schedule, and would like your rivals to be as strong as possible before you tear them down. Like Thanos holding all the infinity stones and you still beat him, then this week was only nearly perfect. The Wildcats have Tennessee and Louisville on their schedule, so while their loses are amazing as a rival, it does weaken the schedule for Kentucky. North Carolina is irrelevant to our strength of schedule, so you can still definitely enjoy that. Actually, enjoy them all, our rivals floundering is great fun.
Vanderbilt beating Alabama, on the other hand, increases next week’s matchup by about a million from where it was before. When the time and TV network were set (it’s 7:45 pm EST on SEC Network), it was billed as two middle-of-the-road SEC teams. That was before Vanderbilt pulled off the biggest upset of the season to match Kentucky’s huge upset of Ole Miss.
Speaking of the Ole Miss Rebels, they went into South Carolina and dominated the Gamecocks all game and in every facet of the game. That actually helps Kentucky, even though Kentucky lost to the Gamecocks. We want an Ole Miss team that isn’t considered “over-rated.” The Rebels being good is vital to the Kentucky resume looking great.
Do you know what else happened that made it even more perfect? The SEC is running out of unbeaten teams. In fact, there’s only one left: The Texas Longhorns. This is good for Kentucky, too, as they are trying to neutralize those two losses in the best way possible. They need to rise the rankings and get some more big wins to even see themselves into a college football playoff scenario.
There are two other SEC teams that played today on the Kentucky schedule, and they both helped Kentucky. Flordia beating UCF is helpful to both the SEC conversation and allows Florida to rise up a little out of the ashes. In two weeks, Kentucky goes to the swamp to take them on and, hopefully, take them out. Finally, Georgia had a big win over Auburn, and Georgia staying good also helped Kentucky, as the Wildcats almost pulled off that upset, too.
Nearly a perfect week, enjoy your bye week Cats. It’s time to get back to work.