Prepare for SEC Road Trips as Long-Awaited Droughts End with New Schedule Format

On Tuesday evening at 7 PM ET, every SEC team will learn who they will be playing on the football field for the next four years. The league decided to move forward with a 3+6 scheduling format, adding an additional SEC game to each team’s schedule.

There are plenty of pros and cons to the 9-game SEC schedule. Kentucky will receive more TV money each year, while also increasing the schedule’s level of difficulty. How difficult? We will get a better idea when we see who Kentucky’s annual three opponents will be on Tuesday.

There is one additional benefit to the 3+6 scheduling format: Kentucky will play every team in the SEC, home and away, over a four-year span.

Before Texas and Oklahoma arrived in the league, Kentucky played six games annually against every SEC East opponent. There was one permanent SEC West opponent, Mississippi State, and the other teams from that division rotated on an irregular basis.

That old way of scheduling created some lengthy droughts. Here are the longest waits for BBN to travel around the SEC.

Texas A&M — Kyle Field

Texas A&M joined the SEC with Missouri for the 2012 season. The A&M cult still has yet to make the trip to Lexington. They last played at Stoll Field in 1953.

Kentucky has made the trip to Kyle Field once since A&M joined the SEC. It was a slugfest in 2018. Lynn Bowden took a pitch-pass 54 yards for a touchdown to give the Wildcats an early lead. The only other touchdown of the day was a 40-yard scoop-and-score by Darius West that tied the game with four minutes to play. The game went to overtime where the 13th-ranked Wildcats couldn’t punch in a score. Trayveon Williams ran it in from 10 yards out to give A&M a 20-14 win.

LSU — Tiger Stadium

Kentucky and LSU have only played three times since the Wildcats knocked off the top-ranked team in the country in a triple overtime thriller back in 2007. Two of those games were in Lexington, with Kentucky rolling Coach O 42-21 back in 2021.

Kentucky’s last game at Tiger Stadium was in 2014. The most memorable moment from that 41-3 loss was an illegal block by Dorian Baker that sent a Tiger’s mouthpiece flying ten yards down the field.

Arkansas — Reynolds Razorback Stadium

The Razorbacks joined the SEC in 1992. Over those 33 years, these two teams have only met 8 times. The last meeting was memorable. Lynn Bowden got his first start at quarterback, and the Cats won 24-20 on Jared Lorenzen Night in 2019.

Mark Stoops has never coached a game at Reynolds Razorback Stadium. The 2012 loss in Fayetteville is one of the most embarrassing losses in my lifetime. Tyler Wilson had five touchdown passes to build a 49-7 lead when thunderstorms rolled into Northwest Arkansas. There were still 20 minutes of football that needed to be played, but Joker Phillips said, “We’re good,” and the game was called in the third quarter.

Oklahoma Memorial Stadium

The Sooners are only in their second season of SEC football, so this is obviously going to be the longest drought for Kentucky fans to travel to Norman. Nevertheless, we gotta mention it.

Kentucky last played at Oklahoma in 1980. Barry Switzer’s squad opened the season with a 29-7 victory over Kentucky. The Sooners only lost twice, capping the year off with a Big 8 Title and a victory over Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

The Sooners made a return trip and played at Commonwealth Stadium in 1982, a 29-8 win, but the Cats have the ultimate trump card. Kentucky knocked off undefeated Oklahoma in the 1951 Sugar Bowl.