Historically Bad

Kentucky Football is currently, without doubt, embarking upon an historic season.  Unfortunately for our fans, players, and coaches that kind of historic is the kind that you would only wish upon your arch rival.  Yes, this is the kind of historic that induces over-emotional fan reactions, embarrassing on-field results, and coaches eventually being relieved of their duties.  So far this season, Joker Phillips and his 1-6 squad have produced some outstandingly underwhelming results on the field that have most within the fanbase calling for his job to be taken away sooner rather than later.  While this season is a lost cause at this point in time, it's not the first time in this program's history that embarrassingly awful results are being placed on the field.  Kentucky has quite the history with that for certain.  So, to give some perspective on just how awful this season has been thus far, I researched past Kentucky teams to see just where this team ranks among the worst in modern Kentucky history through seven games. First to come up with the ratings, I simply compiled scoring data through each of the respective teams' first seven games and applied that to the same rating system I do for college football.  I'm fully aware that the styles of play in college football have changed over the past 30 years, giving potential for data skewing, but I don't find it drastic enough to make this an unfair comparison.  Also these numbers do not take strength of schedule into account, but given that Kentucky historically has a similar degree of difficulty when it comes to opponent strength the numbers should hold relatively consistent. In terms of rating by scoring margin, this team is the 5th worst in modern program history (since 1980 and beyond).  What makes this even more spectacular is the fact that Joker Phillips inherited a program merely three years ago that was experiencing, arguably, it's most stable years in history.  While coaches like Rich Brooks and Guy Morriss have the very reasonable excuse of receiving a mess from the previous administrations, Joker Phillips has no such excuse.  Something even more terrifying about these numbers is that they have the potential to become much worse as Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee still all loom on the schedule's horizon. Kentucky Football has an interesting history to say the least.  From the Bear Bryant years to the Bluegrass Miracle this program has just about seen it all. Though there's always fluctuation in success one thing seemingly remains constant over the years, we always manage to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."  Even though close losses to the likes of LSU, Alabama, and Tennessee leave us saying "what if" we're usually playing competitively with our opponents more often than not.  That's far from the case now as this is among the worst Kentucky squads in history.  There are any number of reasons for this, but given the stability of the program before the current administration took over it's safe to say that a change must be made.