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Sullivan | Governor's Cup reached tipping point?

Tim Sullivan
@TimSullivan714

If not for the first commandment of sports media — Thou Shalt Not Pass Up A Free Meal — the Governor's Cup luncheon would have been eminently missable.

The governor missed it. Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops missed it. Bobby Petrino showed up as advertised Wednesday at Hurstbourne Country Club, but the Louisville coach failed to say anything particularly newsworthy, revealing or inflammatory.

Mark it down as an opportunity squandered. Instead of reprising Clint Eastwood's act from the 2012 Republican National Convention, and addressing an empty chair as if Stoops were sitting in it, Petrino spoke mainly in broad generalities and refrained from tweaking his absent counterpart.

Pity. If you're looking for a little pre-season sniping between UK and U of L to set the tone for 2014 football, you may have to wait until November. With the state's most spirited rivalry now scheduled for the last game of the season, Wednesday's luncheon felt like a ritual that had outlived its usefulness or, at least, its time slot.

Except, perhaps, for the potato salad. The potato salad was worth the trip.

Promoting a game to be held more than four months away is a recipe for shrugs, and the prevailing apathy was reflected Wednesday by scores of vacant seats that were filled for last year's luncheon. Moving the Kentucky-Louisville game to the end of the season means both schools will have 11 other games to play before they face each other, and other things on their minds.

Petrino's film study has so far focused on U of L's opener against Miami and its first Atlantic Coast Conference road opponent, Virginia. Before his preparations begin in earnest for Kentucky, Petrino must also contend with potent Clemson, with the defending national champions from Florida State and with Touchdown Jesus.

Fans can afford to be consumed with an arch-rival. Coaches are obliged to stick to the schedule.

"It is what it is now," Petrino said of the UK game. "I think it's on rivalry weekend (Nov. 29) and I'm excited to play them on that. That's a good time of the year to play them."

Count Howard Schnellenberger among the dissenting voters. The former Louisville coach and UK graduate, still feisty at 80 years old, prefers the in-state rivalry as an appetizer rather than a dessert course. He likes having the preseason buildup and the rest of the season to atone in the event of a defeat.

"Obviously, I don't think (November's) the best place to play it," Schnellenberger said at Wednesday's luncheon. "I always go back to the University of Miami in 1983. We got beat by Florida in the opening game, badly (28-3) by Charley Pell and that crew.

"But we regrouped and won the rest of them and we had a chance to play for the national championship. If you lost that (rivalry) game on the last game of the year, there'd be no chance. The closer it is to the beginning of the year, the best chance you have to have a successful season."

But what happens if you lose your opener and are unable to regroup? How does an early defeat against a big rival affect a team's momentum, its confidence and its ticket sales? More to the point, perhaps, why open your season against a formidable opponent if you have the opportunity to pad your record and foster optimism by writing a check to some cupcake, say, Tennessee-Martin?

Petrino says he likes the idea of a high-stakes opener because "it helps us throughout the entire off-season, through the winter, spring ball, summer. Our guys are very motivated." And there's a lot to be said for that ambitious attitude. Yet with five of last year's Top 25 teams on its schedule — not counting Florida and Georgia — Kentucky need not go out of its way to find trouble.

Given the daunting challenges of competing in the Southeastern Conference, and the degree of difficulty posed by "Little Brother," a noisy segment of Big Blue Nation would prefer the Wildcats stopped playing football against Louisville altogether.

The end of the series would be an awful shame, but maybe less of a surprise. Though it would be silly to attach much meaning to Mark Stoops' absence from Wednesday's luncheon, it was consistent with UK's perceived ambivalence about preserving the football rivalry.

"Let's praise God that the game finally came together and you didn't have to take it to the legislature. ..." Schnellenberger said. "Starting back before the turn of the century — both centuries — state rivalries is what college football was predicated on.

"This could be Alabama-Auburn. This could be Mississippi-Mississippi State. This could be Georgia-Georgia Tech. I don't know of anything that could overshadow that."

Except, perhaps, for basketball.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714.