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July 1, 2009

College football season is getting closer

Larry Winterland

If you are really quiet and listen very carefully, you can hear the sound in the back ground — hear it?

It’s the sound of July.

It’s the sound of shoulder pads slapping, helmets crashing, and pigskins flying.

It sounds great doesn’t it?

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be in and out of my football induced coma, counting down the days to two-a-days.  

I feel like a fish out of water.

It wasn’t always like this. Over the past three years or so, football came first.

Everything in the state went back to normal on April 1.

John Calipari was hired as the head basketball coach and since then Kentucky has become a basketball state once again.

Does anyone remember that the football team has won three straight bowl games?

If Billy Clyde Gillispie was still here, the focus would be on opening weekend in Cincinnati. Instead the No. 1 recruiting class is taking all the buzz away from what could be a historic football season.

If this football season is historic for the University of Kentucky, it won’t be easy. The SEC is the class of college football. The schedule isn’t very kind to Rich Brooks’ squad.

The harder SEC games are at home.

The games that we call “winnable” are on the road.

Kentucky will not be playing for an SEC title, but the Wildcats should make their fourth straight bowl appearance.

And while I am at it, let me tell you how the rest of the season unfolds as I see it.

Quarterback Mike Hartline will be just effective enough to keep the highly-ranked freshmen recruits on the bench. The receivers, who are a year better, will make the plays they couldn’t last season for the starting quarterback.

If Hartline manages the game just right, the defense will be good enough to keep Kentucky in football games.

If Kentucky wants to get to that fourth straight bowl appearance, they better only lose one game between October 11 and November 7. This means the Wildcats better win all their games in November during that stretch and pull an upset on the road in either South Carolina or Auburn.

I have said it once and I will say it again, 11 straight weeks of football isn’t going to be easy for Kentucky, I don’t care how many easy games there are on the schedule.

But I don’t think this is the year Kentucky ends the streaks against Florida, Tennessee, or South Carolina. At the end of the day, it’s still Steve Spurrier, the national champions, and Tennessee.

What I think will be fun to watch is Lane Kiffin wonder clueless on the sidelines as the minor NCAA violations pile up.

At the end of the year, Kentucky should have at least six wins, if not seven. And for the fourth straight year, we should be making plans to watch football after Christmas.

I just wonder if it will have the same effect because after all, the basketball Wildcats did have the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation.

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