Ugly in Nashville..

When we found out last year that Western Kentucky's game with Kentucky would be played at LP Field in Nashville, Jonathan and I figured we would go. We knew we could easily get there in a coupleof hours. When schedule came out, we saw the game was on Thursday instead of Saturday. Jonathan doesn't have class on Friday and I knew I could take vacation so we decided we'd still go. The game time was 8:15pm which was late, but was OK for us. When the tickets went on sale, I went ahead and bought us club seats. I knew it was going to be hot on the first day of September, so I wanted us to be able to go into an air conditioned area if need be. I bought a parking pass for one of the LP lots as well.

As the time got closer to the date of the game, I kept hearing that ticket were not good. The hope was 45,000 but it looked like 30,000 was the best they'd draw. I picked up Jonathan at WKCTC and we headed out. We stopped at Zaxby's for dinner in Clarksville. We got to the stadium with no problem. The crowd was low. We had no trouble parking. We got into to the club level and it was great. The area was air conditioned. There were numerous TVs showing various football games. We were on the front row of the club section on the 10 yard line, so our view was great.

The game started and it wasn't so great. UK got the ball first and was stuffed and went three and out. Neither team could do much. All I'd heard all summer was how great the UK offensive line looked and how much better QB Morgan Newton looked. Neither was apparent here. UK couldn't do anything on offense. They had 35 total yards in the first half. A Newton interception set up a WKU field goal. The WKU QB Jakes was just as bad. His interception set up the only decent run by UK (by freshman Josh Clemens) for a TD. UK somehow lead 7-3 at the half. The lower half of the stadium wasn't even full. The whole place just seemed dead

The half time was nice. The Club area had plenty of cushioned chairs and couches. Jonathan and I had a seat and watched Louisville finish off Murray State 21-9. There was much complaining by the UK faithful. I was tempted to ask Mitch Barnhardt for a refund myself :-).

The second half wasn't much better. Morgan Newton litterally sacked himself bringing many groans from the UK faithful. He threw two more interceptions. The UK defense kept holding WKU off. Ryan Tylachka kept getting off great punts to bail UK out. The game was still 7-3 heading into the fourth quarter and we were worried. Finally, with about 6 minutes to go, UK made a couple of big plays. Morgan Newton took off on a scramble and ran for 58 yards. A couple of plays later, he made a beautiful pass to La'rod King for a touchdown. We felt a lot better with a 14-3 lead. UK's defense kept up the heat and UK ended up with a very fortunate win.

The attendence was 24,000. There would have been that many at a UK-WKU basketball game in Rupp Arena. WKU needs to do whatever it takes to get this game played on a Saturday when UK and WKU play again in 2013. MTSU has first rights to the field and would have to give permission. A lot of people including me are very discouraged about UK football now. If UK plays like this, they'll be lucky to win more than two more games (including probable losses to Louisville, Vandy, and UT for 27th straight time). The defense played well, but I don't know if they can do that against an SEC team. We'll see how things go against Central Michigan at home next week.