Is UK ready to get out of the Southeastern Conference East Division cellar?
Pick up most preseason magazines and predictions and UK is predicted sixth in the East, 11th overall.
The same Cats that have gone to three straight bowls (which isn’t the feat it used to be, but still) are mostly picked below Vanderbilt and South Carolina, again.
It’s almost like those preseason mags have a template already in place, with UK and Vandy interchangable at the bottom.
Questions abound
Of course, every year UK head coach Rich Brooks must field questions about his team, just like any other coach. But this year, there are seemingly more questions.
How’s the defense going to hold up? And those young, new defensive ends? Can Micah Johnson and Trevard Lindley make enough of a difference to cover the holes?
When will Brooks step aside and let Joker Phillips take the reigns? Is Mike Hartline UK’s quarterback for the whole season?
Can UK win at South Carolina and finally beat Steve Spurrier? What about at Auburn? How about beating the Volunteers?
That’s just a sampling of the questions facing Brooks. Just listing all questions will fill this entire column. Answering them won’t be that hard.
UK could finish with an 8-4 record. They could end up 4-8. The Cats can count on four wins: Miami of Ohio, Louisville, Eastern Kentucky and Louisiana-Monroe. Throw in should-be wins against Vanderbilt and Mississippi State and the Cats can discuss bowling again.
And for the optimists, at South Carolina and at Auburn are pretty winnable as well (if you’re putting money on it, take a win over the Tigers before the Gamecocks).
But can you set any of those in stone? Would you run and bet UK in any game other than EKU and Louisiana-Monroe?
Having seen last year’s offense and knowing that most of those guys are back, would you really bank on UK scoring more than two touchdowns a game? Will you count on Hartline making the Andre Woodson junior leap?
Most of these questions will be answered by week four of the regular season. But the biggest question of all will loom until that final game against the Volunteers.
Stuck in the cellar
Brooks makes no bones about it — he realizes that upsets of Georgia and Louisiana State haven’t done enough to change the idea of what UK football should be.
He knows that in order to really make noise and influence an SEC race is to beat someone on their own turf, besides Vandy or Mississippi State. It means going Between the Hedges to beat Georgia. It means going to Columbia, S.C., to beat Spurrier.
Brooks has come close recently, putting Alabama and South Carolina on the ropes in recent years. Of course, last year Florida and Tennessee were the ugly counters to those games.
Put all the other depth chart questions, talent questions and succession questions to the side. In the grand scheme of all things football, they don’t matter because they change year to year.
So far, Brooks has gone from a coach whose seat was in full flames to a coach that has turned a program around. That, in itself, is no small feat.
But there is one big question Rich Brooks needs to answer before he sets out into the sunset (which will be sooner rather than later).
He took Oregon to the Rose Bowl and a Pac-10 championship in 1994, culminating with the Ducks’ first-ever four consecutive bowl game run with the best bowl the Ducks could reach.
With Florida and Alabama still prominent, no one in their right mind would force the same title standard for Brooks this year. But this year, instead of another lowly bowl in the state of Tennessee and another finish in the SEC cellar, it’s time for Brooks to answer the questions that will take him from being a really good UK head coach to one of the top two coaches the program has ever seen.
Can Brooks take UK out of the cellar and into the upper half of the SEC?
Can Brooks return UK to a Florida bowl game, where they play a good school from a power conference?
And last but not least, can Brooks make UK football matter enough that SEC schools stop marking the Cats down as a highly-likely home win? Can he make the preseason magazines to scrap their prediction templates?
This is the season that will show us the answers to those questions.
Finish 6-6 and we’ll all plug UK in at sixth again next year.
Finish better and UK fans will stop wishing Bear Bryant never left town.
Finish 8-4 and maybe Brooks can help make the new preseason magazine template for 2010.
Kenny Colston is a journalism senior. E-mail kcolston@kykernel.com
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