Kentucky v. Tennessee

I am outraged that Kentucky is playing Tennessee in football tomorrow.  I don't care if Tennessee leads the all-time series 77-24-9.  I don't care if Tennessee beat Kentucky 26 times in a row from 1985 to 2010.  I don't care if Tennessee won 50-16 last year.  I don't care how much the folks in Lexington want to beat the University of Louisville.  TENNESSEE SHOULD BE KENTUCKY'S LAST GAME OF THE YEAR -- PERIOD.

In the whole history of Kentucky football, the Cats have only played Louisville 27 times.  They've played Tennessee 110 times.  Kentucky and Tennessee have both been in the SEC together since 1933, and for almost that whole time, the UK/UT game has concluded Kentucky's season -- as it should.  The Kentucky Wildcats don't just represent the City of Lexington, or Fayette County -- they represent the entire Commonwealth.  As does the University of Tennessee.  It is appropriate that the flagship universities in these two proud states -- which joined the Union within a few years of each other, which gave us the rivalry between Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson, which were connected by the L & N railroad, and the Tennessee River, and the Appalachian Mountains -- should play at the end of the season.

By making U of L the last game of the year, and making the Tennessee game just another SEC game on the schedule, Kentucky is turning its back on its own history and its own conference, and putting itself on the same level as U of L.  I dissent.