When the college football season began, the defining trips on Georgia’s schedule appeared to be to Columbia, S.C., Baton Rouge, La., and Jacksonville, Fla.
But as it turns out, the Bulldogs’ highest-stakes regular-season game comes Saturday afternoon on a campus better known for basketball against a team that has never reached the SEC Championship football game.
Improbably, the SEC East’s road to Atlanta runs through Lexington, Ky., this season.
The winner of Saturday’s Georgia-Kentucky game (3:30 p.m, CBS; News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB) will clinch the Eastern Division championship and a berth in the SEC title game. The Wildcats are 7-1 (5-1 SEC), same as Georgia.
“Their stadium is going to be jumping, going to be loud,” UGA tight end Isaac Nauta said. “It’s a spot they haven’t been in for a while.”
Yes, a very long while.
Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Mark Story wrote that the game will be most important ever at Kentucky’s stadium, which opened in 1973. (The 61,000-seat venue was known as Commonwealth Stadium until last year, when it was rebranded as Kroger Field, the SEC’s only football stadium named for a corporate sponsor.)
"The 1951 Sugar Bowl, when Bear Bryant's one-loss UK upset No. 1 Oklahoma 13-7 to snap the Sooners' 31-game win streak, is the only football game Kentucky has ever played that was bigger than this Saturday's," Story wrote.
“Whoever wins Saturday,” he concluded, “this should be a wonderful week for a UK football fan base that deserves it.”
A Kentucky win would send the Wildcats to the SEC Championship game for the first time since the event was created in 1992. Vanderbilt is the only other Eastern Division team never to get there.
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops embraced the magnitude of Saturday’s game at his weekly news conference.
“You can’t shy away from it,” Stoops said. “There’s too much information out there – (the players) know what’s going on. And that’s OK. They are allowed to be excited.
“Obviously, the situation is a little different than it’s been,” he added, “and we talk about that. But our approach will be the exact same (as other weeks). … We’ve just got to stay consistent and be the best version of ourself we can be.”
Kentucky, with a senior-laden starting lineup, has clinched a winning record in SEC games for the first time since 1977 after going 4-4 in league play each of the past two seasons.
“We’re starting to experience a culmination of a lot of years of hard work by a lot of people,” said Stoops, who is in his sixth season at Kentucky.
The Wildcats this season have been among the nation’s stingiest defensive teams. They have allowed an average of 13 points per game (tied with Clemson for the fewest among FBS teams) and haven’t permitted any opponent to score more than 20 points (the only FBS team that can make that claim). Senior linebacker Josh Allen leads the SEC in sacks (10), tackles for loss (14.5) and fumbles forced (5).
On offense, Kentucky averages 214 yards rushing per game, led by junior running back Benny Snell’s SEC-leading 116.9 per game. Yet, the Wildcats have been held to 14, 14 and 15 points in their past three games (two of them nevertheless wins).
Most recently, Kentucky put itself in position to play for the East title by beating Missouri 15-14 with a touchdown pass on an untimed down following a pass-interference penalty against the Tigers on what otherwise would have been the final play of the game. Kentucky’s other points in that game came via a field goal and a punt return, and the Wildcats trailed 14-3 in the fourth quarter.
“They believe,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “They have a good coaching staff. They have a good group of young men that fight. When you have a defense that plays like they do, they're in every game.”
Among Kentucky’s breakthroughs this season was a win over Florida, snapping a 31-game losing streak to the Gators.
Now the Wildcats will try to break another drought: an eight-game losing streak against Georgia that has dropped Kentucky’s all-time record vs. the Bulldogs to 12-57-2.
To quantify the improbability of Kentucky being one of the last two teams in the running for the SEC East championship, consider this: In a preseason media survey, 285 voters predicted the division’s order of finish, and just one voter, his or her identity not disclosed, picked Kentucky to win it.
Even now, Georgia remains the solid favorite -- a 9 1/2-point pick Saturday, according to oddsmakers.
“Upsets happen all the time,” Georgia wide receiver Jeremiah Holloman cautioned. “All types of things happen all the time.”
And some things -- Kentucky playing for a division championship in football, for example -- almost never happen.
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