Coming off a 10-win season, Mark Stoops has Kentucky football at one of its highest peaks ever. The No. 14 Wildcats finished 10-3 after outlasting No. 12 Penn State 27-24 in the VRBO Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Alas, the two most recent, prior times Kentucky won as many as nine games in a regular season, the Wildcats suffered the dreaded “slip back” into mediocrity the following season:
u25aa 1978. Coming off a 10-1 season the prior year, Fran Curci’s 1978 Cats went 4-6-1.
u25aa 1985. After going 9-3 and winning the Hall of Fame Bowl in 1984, Jerry Claiborne’s 1985 Wildcats opened their season with a 30-26 upset loss to Bowling Green in Commonwealth Stadium and finished 5-6.