Vote no on Texas and Oklahoma? UK long ago prioritized $EC cash over football viability.

As it turned out, there was an advantage in being on vacation in Charleston, S.C., last week when news broke that Big 12 titans Oklahoma and Texas were reportedly deep in conversations to join the SEC.

It provided a chance to hear opinions on the potential blockbuster realignment from fans of a variety of Southeastern Conference schools.

The question that kept being asked in Charleston was why would SEC schools that already struggle to sustain consistent football success vote yes on adding two more traditional pigskin juggernauts to their league?

I will leave others to explain the thinking of Arkansas, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. But I think I can explain the rationale that will lead Kentucky to vote yes on the Sooners and Longhorns.

For UK, the moment of choosing between $EC bucks and a future of greater football viability is long past. It came when C.M. Newton was UK athletics director and Charles Wethington the university president in the 1990s.

As Newton — who passed away in 2018 at age 88 — explained it to me in a 2014 phone interview, it was during his run as UK AD (1989-2000) when Atlantic Coast Conference officials discreetly invited Kentucky to join their league.

“We talked to them very seriously, but very quietly,” Newton said of ACC officials. Among the people he met with, Newton said, were then-ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan and then-Duke athletics director Tom Butters.

His primary motivation in considering a league switch, Newton said in 2014, was seeking a conference in which Kentucky football would stand a better chance to build sustained success.

“They wanted us to come on and join their league,” Newton said of the ACC. “I thought, with the way (UK) football was (struggling in the SEC), that might have been the best path for us.”

Yet when it came time to actually make the decision to walk away from the financial security and prestige that come with membership in the Southeastern Conference, Newton said the powers that be at Kentucky in the 1990s just couldn’t do it.

“There were a lot of ways in which I thought (UK moving to) the ACC made sense,” Newton said in 2014. “... But, at the end of the day, it’s just doggone tough for a school to leave the SEC.”

If you are just evaluating the competitive sphere, succeeding in the SEC has been an all-but-impossible task for UK football.

Kentucky has been competing in the league since it began in 1933. In all that time, UK has compiled a winning record in league games only eight times — 1949 (4-1); 1950 (5-1); 1953 (4-1-1); 1954 (5-2); 1964 (4-2); 1976 (5-1); 1977 (6-0); and 2018 (5-3).

By Kentucky’s historic standards, the past five seasons of the Mark Stoops coaching era have been a bountiful stretch — 37-26 overall, bowl victories over Penn State, Virginia Tech and North Carolina State.

Yet, even with Stoops doing good work, UK is 20-22 in the SEC since 2016.

Now, imagine the greater degree of SEC football difficulty that will arise for the Cats from potentially adding Oklahoma and Texas to the league.

Yet the same considerations — finances, prestige — that kept Kentucky in the SEC in the 1990s will lead the current UK administration to vote “yes” if/when the Sooners and Longhorns apply to join the league.

Being in the SEC was already a cash cow (some $45.5 million distributed to each school for 2019-20). Bringing on football brands the strength of Texas and Oklahoma will make the league dramatically more lucrative.

To a degree rivaled only by the Big Ten, membership in the SEC is a guarantee that no kind of conference realignment will ever drop Kentucky from the elite tier of college athletics.

If you’ve wondered, Kentucky is 0-1 all-time in football against Texas. Bear Bryant’s 1951 Wildcats fell 7-6 in Austin.

UK is 1-2 all-time against Oklahoma. Bryant’s Cats scored the greatest win in Kentucky football history when they upset the No. 1 Sooners 13-7 in the Sugar Bowl that followed the 1950 season, snapping a 31-game OU win streak.

Oklahoma beat Kentucky twice in the early 1980s, besting the Wildcats 29-7 in Norman in 1980 and 29-8 in Lexington in 1982.

During the Stoops-era ascension in UK’s football fortunes over the past five seasons, the frequently stated, big-picture goal for the Wildcats program has been to win the SEC East Division for the first time.

Depending on whether and when the marriage between the SEC and Oklahoma and Texas goes through, it’s possible Kentucky’s chances to win the East as presently constituted may already be all but gone.

Bottom line: Winning football championships in an SEC that includes “Boomer Sooner” and “Hook ’em Horns” will be even more challenging for schools such as Kentucky.

Yet the added financial clout and prestige Oklahoma and Texas will bring to the league explains why UK will all but assuredly be among the “yes” votes on adding them.

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