Two SEC East rivals will do battle once again on Saturday as the No. 22 Florida Gators will head up to Lexington to face the Kentucky Wildcats at noon ET on ESPN.
When you think of these two programs, they are hardly each other’s primary or even secondary rivals in football. An extended run of dominance of one side over the other rendered this matchup as just another run-of-the-mill SEC game, with blowouts happening on a yearly basis. However, the tide has shifted in recent years and there is finally juice to a series that spans back over a century to World War I.
Below, we’ll dive into the history of UF vs. UK.
History of Florida vs. Kentucky
Total games played: 73
Record: Florida leads 53-20
First game: November 29, 1917, Kentucky wins 52-0 in Lexington
Last game: September 10, 2022, Kentucky wins in Gainesville
Florida and Kentucky first faced each other in 1917 and began playing semi-regularly in 1926, first as members of the SoCon and later in the newly formed SEC. After the Gators won a 6-0 home matchup in 1937, the two wouldn’t face each other again until 1948 and would play every year until 1957.
Now let’s pause right here and give a history lesson within this history lesson.
It should be noted that by this point, the Wildcats had mostly dominated the Gators with a 12-5 record through their 17 matchups. For some, it may come as a surprise to learn that UF wasn’t always a power. See, Florida is the youngest football program in the SEC. The school fielded its first team in 1906, over a full decade behind contemporaries like Kentucky. The Gators were mostly middling to above average throughout the first half of the 20th century and the elements that later helped turn them into a national power (post-WWII population boom in the state of Florida, integration, etc.) did not yet exist.
UK was also an above average football program during this period as the school (and the state) gravitated towards basketball under Adolph Rupp. However, a young rising coach by the name of Paul “Bear” Bryant arrived to Lexington in 1946. The Bear brought UK to national prominence and an 11-1 campaign in 1950 earned the Cats their only claimed national title in program history. Bryant dominated UF during his time in Lexington, notably stomping the Gators 40-6 at home during their national title season of 1950.
Alright, everyone understand where these two programs are by the mid-1950’s? Good, let’s resume. After a Florida victory in 1957, the rivalry would go on hiatus for another decade. By the time the rivalry returned in 1967, fortunes were beginning to turn towards the Orange and Blue.
The Gators were fresh off their most successful season to date in 1966, a 9-2 Orange Bowl campaign where a senior quarterback by the name of Steve Spurrier won the Heisman Trophy. Meanwhile, the Wildcats had fallen towards the bottom of the SEC and had experienced just one seven-win season since Bryant had left for Texas A&M in 1954. A 28-12 Gator victory in ’67 continued what would end up being an eight-game winning streak that officially tied them with the Cats in the all-time series. Kentucky would briefly regain control in the mid-late 1970’s before Charley Pell and Galen Hall’s Florida teams ripped off six straight, giving UF the all-time lead in the series. Kentucky would win 10-3 in Lexington in 1986, but no one could’ve predicted what would happen next.
Starting with a 27-14 victory in Gainesville in 1987, Florida would win the next 31 games of the rivalry against Kentucky. That’s right. THIRTY-ONE GAMES. THREE DECADES STRAIGHT OF NONSTOP DOMINATION OVER THE CATS. Taking over for his alma mater as head coach in 1990, Steve Spurrier cemented UF as the newest national power in college football for the next decade and routinely buried Kentucky along the way. A close 24-20 road win in 1993 preceded a 73-7 thrashing in Gainesville in 1994. Year after year, the beatings would continue under Spurrier. Heck, Kentucky produced one of the greatest college quarterbacks of all time in Tim Couch during this period and it didn’t matter. Florida’s dominance persisted and that dominance would be inherited by Spurrier’s successors in Ron Zook, Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, and Jim McElwain well into the new millennium. Under head coach Mark Stoops, Kentucky came painfully close to ending the streak in 2017. However, a Luke Del Rio touchdown pass to Freddie Swain with 43 seconds left ended those dreams as the Gators escaped Lexington with a 28-27 victory.
The following year in 2018, however, the tables finally turned as UK plamakers Terry Wilson, Benny Snell Jr., and Lynn Bowden Jr. ran all over the Gators in Gainesville to capture a 27-16 victory for the Cats. Florida’s streak finally ended at 31, the fourth-longest winning streak for any uninterrupted annual rivalry in FBS history. Since then, the rivalry has been split as UK has found comforting consistency under Stoops while UF has faded in national relevance. As seen in the lead photo of this very post, fans in Lexington stormed the field following Kentucky’s 20-13 victory in 2021, their first home victory over the Gators since 1986.
