The Streak is Over!

I'm a college football fan much more than a pro football fan and yesterday was week 2 of the season. For the most part, week 2 is comprised of top teams playing weaker opponents to work out kinks that still exist in the team. For example, the top 5 teams beat their opponents by a combined 223 to 67. There were a couple of decent games in there with Clemson beating Texas A&M and Georgia beating South Carolina, but the other three were practice games for the better opponents. The remainder of the Top 25 ranked teams didn't look any better.

One of the best games on yesterday was between two unranked teams that resulted in the longest active consecutive loosing streak of one team to another coming to an end, Florida and Kentucky. This loosing streak also marked the fourth longest loosing streak of one team to another in NCAA history. Since 1986 Kentucky had not beaten Florida, 31 years of losses. The game was played in Gainesville, the Swamp, home of the Florida Gators, where Kentucky had not won a game since 1979. Can you imagine, the vast majority of the young men and women enrolled in at the University of Kentucky had not been born the last time Kentucky beat Florida playing football.

Aside: With Kentucky's major color being blue and some of the Kentucky fans painting their bodies and faces blue they reminded me of Smerfs. Of course these fans are probably not old enough to know what Smerfs are either.

The game started about the same time as my alma mater's, Auburn, so I was annoying my wife flipping back and forth between games and suggesting the games should coordinate commercials so that I never had to see one. A second TV would help the problem but then I'd be flipping sound from one to the other which would thoroughly confuse my wife. Auburn's game was another scrimmage game, with backup players on both sides getting to start playing in the middle of the 2nd quarter when the score had gotten to 42-0. With the Auburn game looking like a professional preseason game, I spent more and more time with the Florida-Kentucky game.

Even though neither Kentucky nor Florida are expected to be powerhouses in the SEC this year, the game was competitive throughout. Kentucky took an early lead with Florida coming back in the second quarter to take the lead. In the third quarter Kentucky took the lead for the rest of the game. Although the final score was 27-16, the game was never under control for Kentucky.

On the last play of the game with the score 21-16, Florida was driving for a potential win. Florida's quarter back, Feleipe Franks, had dropped back to pass when Kentucky's Josh Allen stripped the ball from his hand resulting in an amazing fumble that looked like a forward pass. Davonte Robinson, playing for Kentucky scooped up the fumbled pass and ran toward the goal but stopped before going into the end zone thinking the fumble was actually a forward pass. Finally realizing the play had not been blown dead, Robinson barely got the ball into the end zone as time had expired.

This was a game well worth watching, especially the last play if you can find it on highlights somewhere. Congratulations Kentucky on beating Florida and getting the streak ended. Personally, not being a Florida fan, I hope this is the start of a Kentucky streak of wins that results in me seeing Florida loose to Kentucky for the rest of my life.