GrantNKY

I think it all comes down to injuries. Whichever team is healthier heading into the game at Denver, I believe gets the first round bye. 2a and 2b in my opinion. Bengals offense could do enough damage to give the team a chance to win, and Burfict being back sures up the tackling with the linebackers (which has been there biggest problem all year) so I think the Bengals defense will finally get some momentum. I know we are 7-0, but its possible this team's best football is ahead of them. Who-Dey!

The game of the week and potentially the game of the year thus far. Winner controls their own destiny into the playoffs. Who you got?

Florida State wins as long as Dalvin Cook plays. Doesn't matter who the FSU QB is, if Cook plays I think they win a close game late on a long TD run by Cook.

The idea that JT isn't liked by his teammates couldn't be further from the truth. He was voted team captain BY HIS TEAMMATES way before the team had decided on a QB. JT is one of the most well respected guys on the entire team and has been the vocal leader all year. He has been the one giving pregame speeches before every game, even the games Cardale started. Thats why the news hit me so hard because he is truly a really good guy, just made a mistake that he will learn from and will use this to help become a more effective leader for the team both on and off the field so others won't make the same mistake he made that night. Also, take a lap if you believe JT was in anyway at fault with the incident he had with his girlfriend. He was the victim in that circumstance.

I guess Ill be the first Ohio St. fan to post on this. This situation sucks, there is no denying that, but the team will be just fine. If anything the team will rally behind JT because he is their guy. He is the unquestioned leader of that team and will remain so. Urban will use this as just another chip on the teams shoulder. Urban looks for things to rally his team behind i.e. last year no one believes in you, granted an OVI from his star QB would not be his first choice, its still something to rally behind. By the time the Mich. St. game comes around, this will be a non story.

Top 4

1 Ohio State

2 LSU

3 Clemson

4 Baylor

 

First 4 Out

5. TCU

6. Notre Dame

7. Stanford

8. Michigan St.

How exactly could the atmosphere for the Auburn game have been better? Details please....

I don't know how, it's just doesn't feel as electric. It just always feels like people are waiting for something bad to happen. It's like the Bengals the majority of my life time. Yeah people are passionate about them and support them no matter what, but there is just always this sense throughout the fan base that something bad is going to happen. You can just feel it, I can tell it from talking to UK football fans and they just seem very passive aggressive about the team at all times. You look at programs across the country and especially in their own conference and it just looks like UK is the odd man out when it comes to football. Heck, most UK fans I know cheered harder for Alabama last year when they played Ohio State than they usually do for Kentucky games. That shouldn't be the case. But as far as the Auburn game being electric just visit another big school for a big night game and it won't even compare. I would suggest Ohio State, but your SEC bias probably wouldn't allow you to judge them fairly. I want Kentucky football to be good, I think it would good for the school and good for the state. I think Kentucky football being good on the college level would transition into better football on the high school level in the state as well. But I think the first step to a successful team is a fan base that still cares about football even when basketball starts.

There are enough fans to support both sports. I know many who are die-hard football fans and many who are die-hard basketball fans but they are all die-hard UK fans!

Fair enough and I know that the die-hard football fans will support no matter what. So I figured that this thread wouldn't get that much support on here because the majority of the UK fans on here are the die-hard ones that you described. But the UK fans on BGP couldn't sell out commonwealth by themselves. They need the fair weather fans to become die-hard fans, but that is hard to do when you have a basketball team that is wildly more successful and easier to root for.

Bernie labels himself as a socialist. He wishes for the government to be the largest business in a nation and wants them to provide any service you can think of for free. He obviously never took an economic class, or ran a business of any sort, or had any interaction with the free market besides buying groceries and complaining that the government doesn't provide everyone with food stamps.

Actually the schedule just gets tougher around BBM time.

 

UK fans would LOVE to have a product to cheer for.

But you do have a product, just not one that one that is currently competing all that well. All I'm saying is that it's hard to build a football tradition at a school that at the first sign of hardship, jumps off the wagon and starts talking about basketball. I'm not saying don't worry about basketball until after football starts, I'm saying you can't expect the football team to play well if the fans aren't behind them fully. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I consider myself a fairly conservative leaning person, but I must say I am disappointed in both parties. Are these 2 really the best candidates we can find? Really? These guys are horrible! Neither one of them are worth my vote. I will probably wind up voting for one of them, but even though I am a conservative, if Beshear was up for re-election I would't hesitate to vote for him. He hasn't really done all that much, but that is actually what I want out of a governor.

The atmosphere around town before the Auburn game was completely electric. I don't see how the fans could have been more enthusiastic. The team laid an egg--that's on them. They followed it up with a road game. That is on them as well. If the players are playing for the fans and media coverage and not for each other then you're recruiting the wrong kind of players.

I can see how the fans could have been much more enthusiastic, I think the atmosphere at most UK games is pretty bland compared to other schools. The only game that I've been to that the atmosphere seemed electric to me was the Auburn game the year Cam Newton was there. But UK consistently struggles to sell out Commonwealth especially starting around this time of year. But I'll bring up Tennessee again, they consistently sell out a 100,000 seat stadium for almost every game. I get it that Tennessee obviously has more of football tradition than UK, but recently these 2 teams are very similar and both have been void of successes recently but the fan base is still supportive there. I just believe the football fan base or lack there of as soon as things go south, has to be noticed by the players on the team and to say that this doesn't have an effect on them is just plain ignorant.

I didn't watch the game, but how did Murray look? With all of the talk about Ulis and Skal, I think Murray has a chance to be the best player on the team. He dominated for the Canadian national team and looks insanely athletic, just wanted to hear thoughts on how he played.

No correlation between their performance and BBM.

You may be right, but it would definitely be harder to play football at UK than lets say Tennessee who has had the same lack of success recently as UK has. At UK the fan base is 100% basketball if you aren't winning, but Tennessee still manages to fill their 100,000 seat stadium even though they haven't been particularly successful recently either.

I tend to believe that all of the hype around Big Blue Madness at UK, as far as people camping out and everything that goes with BBM, definitely has an adverse affect on the football team. I get that Kentucky is that rare scenario where basketball is the bigger sport at the school, but if I was a player on the football team I would be very discouraged that people just shift their focus to basketball so quickly. At the time Kentucky only had 1 loss and it was to a very good Florida team. Ever since, they have looked horrible. They don't appear to have the same drive that they had to begin the season. I don't think Miss. St. is leaps and bounds better than UK. I just think it would be hard to be a football player at UK when in the middle of your season, a fair percentage of your fan base is already more worried about basketball. To me it would be very hard to recruit football players to come here. Typically schools bring recruits to the big conference games like the one coming up, but if a recruit was walking around Lexington right now they would more than likely hear much more talk about basketball than football which would turn me off as a recruit. With that said, why would a basketball player choose elsewhere besides Kentucky, but thats another conversation. Don't take this as me knocking BBM or basketball because clearly that is the higher priority at UK and for the fans, but it would have to be hard to be a football player at UK.

PT is the starter because so far Barker hasn't proved to the coaches that he can handle the life of a college qb off the field yet. I fully believe that if all the stuff in Richmond hadn't happened, Barker would have been the starter this year. Obviously I am not at UK practices, but just watching both of them from high school, Barker to me appears more talented. Granted he didn't have the team around him that PT did, so Barker was asked to do a lot more, but I just think that Barker physically is the better option, but PT is the starter because he has a better head on his shoulders and the coaches trust him more. IMO though we will have the opportunity to see both of them play this game unfortunately because I see this game being a repeat of last week...

5 Florida

 

3 Notre Dame

3 Ole Miss

 

1 Texas Tech

1 Central Mich

1 Tulsa

1 SD St.

1 Va. Tech

1 Tennessee

1 USC

 

TB: 46

I'll await your same in-depth investigation of the Democratic candidates' religions/"cults" after their "clown parade". Oh, and don't forget to include the socialistic ideas of one of your clowns. However, something tells me I shouldn't hold my breath on that one. :wave:

Believe it or not socialism is seen by a lot on the left as a viable alternative to what we have now. But yet he is calling the GOP the crazy party. You can't argue with these people.

Based on participation would be the biggest mess in history. Makes no sense. Coaches would cut "dead weight" to lower their numbers to play smaller teams with a group of studs. A team could have 100 kids one year after winning a state championship and 75 the next year after all the jersey grabbers figure out how hard it actually is. I also do not feel depth is the biggest factor in how successful teams are. Doesn't hurt, but is not the biggest factor by far.

 

 

Again, I asked this earlier, why would a coach willingly cut players just to go play lesser competition. That doesn't sound logical to me. That to me is like a varsity team basketball team getting their confidence built up by scrimmaging the JV team in practice. If coaches are truly willing to do that, then yes I agree participation rate would not be the best determinant for classes, but I just find it hard to believe someone could justify that to themselves.

I don't disagree, but then what about soccer. A lot more kids on the field and a lot of running. Would it be an advantage for soccer? Or even baseball/softball. You play 9, but it'd be great to have a lot more pitchers and ouch runners than the other team. Depth helps in all sports. I agree that Bball is the one that takes the least depth. If you can find 7-8 really good players, you can win a state. But a lot of the other sports will give you advantages with depth as well. I'm not saying I'm agreeing one way or the other. Just saying that going from football to basketball if two different extremes when you're talking about depth needed.

I'm not doubting that other sports besides football need depth. Excuse me if I'm wrong because I'm not super familiar with the rules of soccer at the High School level, but in the pros once you come out, you cannot come back in once you are taken out so a coach will leave their best players in for more of the time unlike football where you can sub play by play. But with baseball, I don't think depth matters as much as you would think it does. You have to fill the 8 positions besides pitcher and barring injury, those 8 can play every out of every game the whole season. Then if you have 1 dominant pitcher, you can win state in Kentucky. I know Simon Kenton isn't the best example because they are a big school, but they went all the way to the state finals 2 years ago basically riding the back of 1 pitcher.

Well you have plenty of time to take that lap then :thumb:

I didn't intend on making it 10 years from now, but that was the only way I could put Rodgers over Brady and I just didn't want Brady at the top of any list of mine.

Andrew Luck? Take a lap

 

10 years from now.

To me it's not about who it effects or doesn't. There comes a point in time where a line has to be drawn, and if you are on one side of the line that's where you play, if on the other that's where you play. In football, using average number of boys in the high school classes at each respective school for classification purposes does a good enough job. It doesn't need to go any further. You have to think of the intangibles to. Maybe, just maybe the reason some schools who have a lot more kids participating is because a coach and his staff work tirelessly getting kids involved in the program, and work endlessly keeping those kids there once they get in. Maybe other schools don't work at it that hard, and their numbers reflect that. So in essence a "participation" style classification wouldn't pay off near as much for the hard work a coaching staff might have done in that situation.

 

So, lets say a Small 2A public school has a great coaching staff, they work harder than anyone getting kids involved, and they have 75 kids dressing. That throws them up to 6A because they have great "participation". Is it now fair to them that they have to play Scott Co, or Trinity, or Simon Kenton, or McCracken County simply because they have more kids? Now, mind you, since they are a small school even though they have a lot of kids, they don't necessarily have a lot of talent. Where they could compete well in their normal class (2A), they get absolutely murdered in 6A. Is this a good thing?

Like I said to each his own. Neither way is perfect, but I just feel participation rate for classes would be more effective.

if it would go off of roster number teams would be in different classes every year... it would be mayhem. number of boys at the school should be what it is... I still think the 4a system was where it was at.

re- evaluate every 4 years or whatever number you want. I think a participation rate system would be easier too with 4 classes because there would be little fluctuation.

10. Andrew Luck

9. Steve Young

8. Drew Brees

7. Dan Marino

6. Brett Favre

5. John Elway

4. Joe Montana

3. Peyton Manning

2. Tom Brady

1. Aaron Rodgers

I placed Rodgers 1 because I'm basing it 10 years in the future, and the fact that I hate Tom Brady with a burning passion and my fingers literally wouldn't let me type a 1 next to his name.