Two teams have kept Mark Stoops and Kentucky football from taking the next step

Those seeking to discredit Mark Stoops’ mostly estimable run as Kentucky football head coach often point to the his record in games against SEC titans Alabama and Georgia.

Stoops is a dreadful 0-15 versus the Southeastern Conference football pillars, standing 0-11 against the Bulldogs and 0-4 against the Crimson Tide.

Yet to my thinking, Kentucky’s futility versus Georgia and Alabama under Stoops is not all that damning given that no one else in the SEC has had much for the Dawgs and the Tide, either. Since the start of the 2017 season, Georgia is 52-5 in SEC regular-season games, while Alabama is 52-6.

No, it is two other Southeastern Conference foes — one obvious, one less so — who have combined to keep UK from maximizing the opportunities that have been available to it during the Stoops era ascension (73-65, eight straight bowl trips) in Kentucky’s football fortunes.

With the exception of one coaching era, Tennessee has been tormenting UK football coaches since before the Southeastern Conference formed in 1933.

Paul “Bear” Bryant, the greatest Kentucky coach of all (1946-53), only beat UT once in eight tries. Bryant’s 27-21 win over Tennessee in the 1953 regular-season finale was the first for UK over UT since 1935.

Bryant’s successor as Kentucky coach, Blanton Collier (1954-61), went 5-2-1 against the Big Orange. Since SEC play began, Collier is the only Kentucky football coach who has compiled a winning mark versus UT.

(From the vantage point of history, that UK fired Collier — who would go on to coach the Cleveland Browns to the 1964 NFL championship — seems inexplicable.)

Stoops will enter the 2024 season standing 2-9 against the Rocky Toppers. Those two victories over UT make Stoops the first Kentucky coach in four decades with multiple wins over the Big Orange.

Among Stoops’ six immediate predecessors on the Kentucky sideline, Jerry Claiborne (1982-89) had one win over UT; Bill Curry (1990-96), Hal Mumme (1997-2000), Guy Morriss (2001-02) and Rich Brooks (2003-2009) combined to score no victories against Tennessee; and Joker Phillips (2010-2012) also silenced “Rocky Top” once.

Yet UK football’s performance against Tennessee in the Stoops era has been, in a sense, even more frustrating than all the Big Blue failure cited above. The reason is that much of the coach’s 2-9 mark against the Volunteers has been compiled during a period when the Kentucky program has been more successful overall than has UT.

Since Kentucky started its eight-season bowl streak in 2016, UK has gone 61-41 overall, including 31-35 in SEC games. Tennessee over the same time frame is 56-43 overall and 28-38 in league contests.

Over the past eight seasons, UK has had twice as many double-digit win seasons (two) as UT (one). Yet Kentucky’s 10-3 records in 2018 and 2021 were both marred by losing to eminently mediocre Tennessee teams.

The 24-7 loss that Josh Allen, Benny Snell and Co. took in Knoxville to a Vols team that would finish 5-7 almost certainly cost Kentucky a berth in a New Year’s Six bowl. The same might have been true of the 45-42 defeat in Lexington that Wan’Dale Robinson, Will Levis and Co. suffered in 2021 against a Tennessee team that finished 7-6.

In its last three home games against Tennessee, Kentucky has taken losses of four, three and six points. Reverse those three outcomes and the Stoops era would add a far-more glossy glow.

The other SEC foe that has had the biggest negative impact on the Stoops coaching era is one that Kentucky has only played three times since 2011.

Against Mississippi, Stoops is 0-3 — and all three of the defeats have been wrenching.

In 2017, Ole Miss beat Kentucky 37-34 on a touchdown pass with five seconds left in the game.

Three years later, the Rebels bested the Wildcats 42-41 in overtime when UK missed a PAT in the OT.

Kentucky lost 22-19 at Mississippi in 2022 when the Wildcats missed two extra points, a 38-yard field-goal attempt and had what likely would have been a game-winning touchdown pass in the final minute called back due to an illegal motion penalty.

The losses to Mississippi in 2017 and 2022 ultimately cost Kentucky eight-win regular seasons. For a football program that has only reached eight victories in regular-season play twice since 1984, those were damaging defeats.

UK falling to Ole Miss in 2020 cost the Wildcats (who finished 5-6) a winning record, the only losing season for Kentucky since 2015.

In the expanded, now division-less SEC of 2024, Stoops and UK will face both of their nemeses on the road. Kentucky will play Ole Miss in Oxford on Sept. 28 at high noon (EDT). The Wildcats will visit Neyland Stadium to play Tennessee on Nov. 2.

To give Kentucky backers the kind of breakthrough season for which they yearn, Stoops and troops likely must find a way to beat at least one of the two teams that have caused UK so much consternation.

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