The Kentucky mens basketball team announced via press release that it will be playing the Florida A&M Rattlers on Dec. 21 in the second installment of a five-year “unity series”.
The “unity series” is a five-year partnership between the University of Kentucky and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) with the SWAC being made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Within the agreement, Kentucky annually hosts one the SWAC teams, a symbolic gesture as HBCUs across the country schedule games against far larger opponents. The payment received for the matchups is often vital to the survival of the smaller schools’ athletic programs.