Alabama Crimson Tide vs. Kentucky Wildcats Preview: Are the Wildcats Better Than We Think?

Alabama Crimson Tide vs. Kentucky Wildcats, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN2

I have a theory, and it's something of a radical theory. I'm beginning to think that maybe Kentucky isn't quite as bad as we all think they are.

Hear me out. I'm not by any means arguing that the Wildcats are anything other than the worst team in the SEC. They're still not anything close to a bowl team, and the odds that they will do anything other than lose by multiple scores against Alabama are rather long, to say the least. But it might not be quite as bad as you think.

Most people wrote Kentucky off after the Western Kentucky loss, and that was to an extent fair. But when Kentucky "only" lost by two touchdowns to Louisville and "only" lost by one score to south Carolina, it's seen as a ding against those teams. But Florida remains the only one of the four teams to be Kentucky to do so by double digits, so maybe we should slow down on the idea that the Wildcats are some historically bad team.

This game can serve as a kind of test of that hypothesis. Are the Wildcats going to lose pretty badly today? Yes. But it just might not be quite as badly as the gloom and doom stories out of Lexington would lead us to believe.

Even if there is some progress on the field for Kentucky, it's going to be hard to see. But at least there are a few reasons to look for it in between the final margin.

Alabama 35, Kentucky 10