COLUMN: To achieve goals, Cats must jump over the Big Orange hurdle

Micah Johnson slumps into his chair and stares.

Not at the media that surround him — cameras, recorders and pens and notebooks in hand. He looks at the door he just came through. The one he probably wishes he could instantly return through.

First question: Why couldn’t you all win after getting that fourth quarter fumble?

Soft-spoken, but beast of a man Micah looks up and everyone expects the usual — the ‘It’s the toughest loss of my career.’  At first Micah obliges. On the second question, much like the first… Micah doesn’t just flip the script. He just stops looking at it.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you all something great to write about, I just know I’m at a loss for words,” the senior linebacker barely whispers. “I just know I went out and played as hard as I could, as well as all the seniors, but we didn’t win. Just too many mistakes.”

Johnson’s story isn’t the first against Tennessee. There have been 24 groups of seniors to sit in the same chairs, with the same depressed look and say the same thing — “Sorry, we just couldn’t do it tonight.”

Some fans will question the officials, because that’s what they will do. Some will question UK head coach Rich Brooks’ decision to not use sophomore Randall Cobb on third and five, with a chance to score the game-winning touchdown on the line (instead, UK settled for the game-tying field goal after coming up short on that third down). Some could blame freshman quarterback Morgan Newton, who played like a true freshman Saturday — and admitted as much after the game.

But in fact, you can’t really blame any of them. For 24 years, Tennessee has beaten UK. In Knoxville, in Lexington, with different head coaches and players on both sides. Say goodbye to the Outback Bowl and a second place finish in the Southeastern Conference East division.

“It’s very tough,” Brooks said. “We had a chance to something that hasn’t been done around here and finish second in the SEC East and we failed.”

This senior class was the Winnables. They just didn’t take losing as an option. Four straight winning seasons with four straight bowl games, including some of the best wins in the program’s history will forever be the legacy of the Senior Class of 2009. Beating Tennessee will not.

The Cats can beat Georgia and Auburn. They can scare Alabama from time to time and inch ever close to finally beating Steve Spurrier and South Carolina. They can flirt with history and keep having overtime games with Tennessee. It won’t be good enough.

UK can continue to churn out senior classes that haven’t experienced a losing season or an offseason that started on Dec. 1 instead of Jan. 1. They can get big road wins and big home wins and make everyone think they’ve turned the corner. But the reality is that none of that will be good enough for too long. College football is a sport that weighs successful on progressing. Turning in 7-5 seasons every year is a quick ticket to boring mediocrity.

So keep going to the lower tier bowls and keep pulling off one or two unexpected victories every year, Rich Brooks and Co. It’s better than many before you could accomplish.

But if you really want to take that leap — if you really want to get the monkey off your back, to contend in the SEC East race and to drag yourself out of the cellar, you’ve got to do one thing and one thing only.

Beat Tennessee.

Otherwise, my kids will be coming to this game with Tennessee wearing gold jerseys — celebrating 50 years of beating UK.

And Micah Johnson Jr.  will have to put on the same sad face.

Kenny Colston is a journalism senior. E-mail kcolston@kykernel.com.