LEXINGTON, Ky. — Middle-aged men grabbed for clumps of the Commonwealth Stadium grass. Women shed happy tears, along with at least one slightly choked up University of Kentucky head football coach.
“At halftime, we talked about how much are you willing to give for a lifetime memory?” UK coach Joker Phillips said in the minutes immediately after his Wildcats shocked Tennessee 10-7 Saturday afternoon.
“At the end I asked [the underclassmen] were they willing to fight, scratch and claw to give their big brothers [seniors] a memory of a lifetime.”
A lifetime — and then some. The last time Big Blue had beaten the Big Orange on the football field was 1984, and that was in Knoxville, a 17-12 triumph in which Phillips was a key performer as a wide receiver.
The last UK win over the Volunteers inside Commonwealth had come in 1981 in Fran Curci’s final game as head coach.