ClayNation: In un-Couched terms, fear the 'Cats

I knew Kentucky football fans were walking on air before I received an e-mail from my friend Weatherholt letting me know that he was no longer attending the Oct. 20 UT-Alabama game featuring "two has-been programs" because Kentucky and Florida were playing the same day to "decide who represents the SEC East in Atlanta."

Seriously, I got this e-mail. Even more ridiculously, my friend Junaid had already predicted the e-mail was coming the day before.

Andre' Woodson: Fear the Apostrophe. (US Presswire)

"Wildcat fans are in rare form," he said after their Arkansas win. And he was right. Last week I gave the Kentucky football team my beaver pelt trader of the week and then they went on the road and won at Arkansas. Now they're threatening to break into the top 10 for the first time since the Ford administration. I may just need to hand them over the beaver pelt award for the rest of the fall.

Kentucky's football success has come on the right arm of my favorite player of all-time to have an apostrophe after his name for no reason, Andre' Woodson. Can you imagine how tough it was for Woodson to get down the rules for possessives in elementary school when he already had an apostrophe after his name? How many nights did he lie awake at night staring at the ceiling because his story about Andre''s toys had come back riddled with red ink over the presumed excessive possessive? What about his fellow classmates? I guarantee you right now there are a ton of Andre''s classmates who still have no idea when to use an apostrophe. For the record, my friend Tardio claims this apostrophe is there because Woodson "preemptively owns everything."

All of this success is refreshing. Before this season, Kentucky football hadn't been ranked in the top 25 since 1985. In my Dixieland Delight book I described being a Kentucky football fan as the equivalent of being a guy who gets struck by lightning 11 times. The school has won just one outright SEC football title in 1950. To say Kentucky football has been steeped in futility would be to insult the depth of the word futility. Nothing has gone right in the Bluegrass state. The closest thing to recent success was the "Air Raid" years when Tim Couch was in Kentucky and played through multiple groin injuries brought on by his torrid path through the sorority houses.

Couch was such a pretty boy that one of my UK friends once ran into him at a tanning salon. When this friend asked Couch for an autograph, Couch signed, and then, in perfect Couchian form, said, "Here you go kid." My friend was a grown man at the time. I think this is how all adults should respond when other grown people ask them for their autographs.

Celebrations were few and far between in past seasons. (US Presswire)

I knew this year was going to be different for Kentucky when, with less than a minute to play against Louisville, an offensive lineman for Kentucky got a personal foul penalty. At the time Kentucky was rapidly approaching field goal range. In year's past this boneheaded play would have been followed up by a sack and then a Hail Mary pass that fell incomplete to the turf. Kentucky would have lost another close game to Louisville, this time 34-33, and yet another inexplicable loss would be added to the lore of Wildcat football. But not this year.

On the play after this penalty came Andre''s redemption, a 57-yard touchdown pass that gave the 'Cats a 39-34 lead. The team then managed to overcome Rich Brooks' decision to kick the extra point rather than go for two. Why did this matter? Because Louisville completed a Hail Mary pass and was tackled at the 5 to end the game. Five yards from putting the Cardinals in position to score and kick an extra point for the win.

Last week Kentucky went on the road, took a punch in the mouth from Arkansas to go down 10-0 and then found a way to win an SEC game. Of course, they were playing against Houston Nutt, but still, a road win is a road win. Especially when the team you beat features the best running back in the country.

These two wins have sent my Kentucky friends' hearts aflutter. From the Kentucky football fountain of boundless optimism in the wake of stinging defeat, a similarly boundless cockiness in the wake of stunning victory has suddenly emerged. Chances are, if you see someone in a Kentucky football jersey and wave at them, they'll turn, look you and up down, and then shake their head in your general direction and keep walking. That's because the 'Cats are a program on the move.

Don't believe me? Here are 12 signs football success has gone to Wildcat fans' heads.

1. Popular T-shirt on campus: Fear the Apostrophe.

2. Ashley Judd is coming to a football game but she's announced she's not willing to attend a Lincoln Financial morning telecast because, "We're so over being LF's bitch."

3. Campus newspapers are already running ads imploring fans not to storm the field after the 'Cats upset Florida because, "We've got to act like we've been there before."

4. 'Cats fans have already made reservations for both the SEC Championship in Catlanta and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. (The 'Cats have been to neither of these games in the lifetime of any readers.)

5. Last week, coach Rich Brooks went out to dinner and someone recognized him.

6. Tim Couch is hitting the Lexington tanning beds again so he looks good when the cameras find him in the stands.

7. 'Cats fans have forgotten how much they hate Rajon Rondo.

8. When people wear football jerseys out to eat at Joe Bologna's, they aren't guaranteed to be Lexington visitors.

9. 'Cats fans are starting to believe UK football players really do use Nutter Fieldhouse to train instead of the previous theory that it was actually a barn in a field where frat boys took tri-delts after formals.

10. Old cheer? C-A-T-S. New cheer? C-A-T-S-'

11. Ramel "Smooth" Bradley threw a rap concert and no one came because they forgot he existed.

12. My friend Weatherholt has already run the SEC East tie-breaking criteria based on approximately 48 permutations. He's also e-mailed them to me. Here they are for your perusal.

Not smart, Orgeron. Not smart.

There is no head coach in the SEC dumber than Ed Orgeron. Seriously, what's this guy thinking at the end of Florida-Ole Miss? His team is facing a fourth-and-11 and he comes out in a unique punt formation. First of all, everyone in the entire stadium knows he has to go for it because there's no way his team is going to get the ball back if he kicks. Tim Tebow was like Eddie George circa-1999, no matter what you knew, he was going to get 10 yards on three consecutive carries. But being the brilliant guy he is, Orgeron doesn't decide to use his offense to pick up the first down. He decides to attempt the fake punt. In perhaps the most likely fake-punt scenario in college football season this year.

D'oh. (Getty Images)

Florida, noticing the unique punt formation, takes a timeout and, presumably, Urban Meyer goes over UF's punt-safe coverage. In a brilliant countermove, Orgeron's guys trot back out onto the field and still attempt the fake punt. Not surprisingly, it's unsuccessful. If someone did this in Pop Warner football the parents would be furious. If I were an Ole Miss fan, I'd be sitting alongside Colonel Reb somewhere in an Oxford bar pounding shots. William Faulkner is screaming invectives inside his grave. If he were calling the game, Mike Patrick would have said something about Britney Spears questioning the play-calling.

Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State's head coach, is actually dumber though. I hate this guy, and I'd never even heard of him until Monday. He clearly has the intelligence of a mildly daft centipede. Once he started his press conference by saying, "This was brought to me by a mother of children," I knew he was an idiot. How many people are mothers without children? I also like the part where he says he doesn't read newspapers. I'm going out on a limb and saying Gundy doesn't read much of anything. But good work by him using long pauses and then throwing out random adverbs ... tremendously.

I hope Oklahoma State and Gundy never win another game until he's gone. What a clown. Also, great job bringing a story that no one on earth had ever heard about and turning it into a national punchline. I'm sure this outburst had nothing at all to do with the fact that Gundy's team lost to Troy earlier in the season. But, lest we all be afraid, remember Gundy's 40. He's a man.