[Quality88]

Stranger things have happened.
Let's just put that right out there. In this college football season, far stranger things will have happened than if the University of Kentucky were to knock off No. 1 Louisiana State on Saturday.
In fact, a UK upset of the Tigers probably wouldn't crack the top five, which at the moment looks something like: 1. Appalachian State over Michigan; 2. Stanford over Southern California; 3. Notre Dame over anybody; 4. Mike Patrick bringing up Britney Spears in the Alabama-Georgia overtime; 5 (tie). Mike Gundy's "garbage" news conference and the University of Louisville's defense.
So we're not crazy to talk about it. LSU is coming off an emotional win over Florida, perhaps the game of the year in college football. Florida lost at home to Auburn a week before. Texas and Oklahoma both lost a week before they played each other. Can the Tigers be immune to the weirdness? They're not. LSU nearly trailed Tulane at halftime two weeks ago.
Now I'm not saying it isn't a stretch. It's an Under-Armour-over-Ralph-Friedgen's-gut stretch. No. 1 teams have crossed the border into Kentucky six times and won all of them -- four against UK and two against U of L. The terms "UK" and "beating No. 1" are not ones generally mentioned together in football. I entered them on an Internet search, and the result was, "You're kidding, right?"
The spirit of '64
So I went searching for someone with firsthand knowledge and found him in Henderson, Ky.
Former All-America lineman Sam Ball played for the last UK team to knock off a No. 1 -- the 1964 team that went to Jackson, Miss., and beat the Mississippi Rebels 27-21.
Ole Miss, under legendary coach Johnny Vaught, was in its prime. When UK, with still a bit lean of a roster under coach Charlie Bradshaw, took the field, the most common question from opponents was, "Where's the rest of your team?"
Ball's answer: "There ain't no more."
"People kept telling us before the game, they put their pants on one leg at a time like you do," Ball recalled. What they didn't tell the Wildcats was that the Rebels had about 50 more pairs of pants.
"I played both ways," Ball said, "which is unheard of today and was pretty damn tough then. We went out on a pretty, sunny day ready to make a name for ourselves. We'd gone through a rigorous training -- I don't even know if that's the word for it. Parris Island was probably an easier deal than living through Bradshaw's regime. We paid a price and accomplished something that was nearly impossible.
"Without a doubt, they had better personnel than we did. But after we won, Coach Vaught came into our locker room and shook every player's hand and said we were the fightingest guys he'd ever seen and we deserved to win. And on that ride home, I remember a glow inside my heart and body. There were thousands of people waiting for us at the Lexington airport. And I've always said, there wasn't a bottle of Kentucky bourbon whiskey anywhere that wasn't opened and empty."
'Anything is possible'
Ball will be at Commonwealth Stadium on Saturday, Section 108, right behind the LSU sideline.
He won't witness a UK victory if the Wildcats play the way they have all season. But if a UK team that has been just good enough in many instances can begin to make some of the plays that it has left on the field, then who knows? It could become part of the insanity in a season when craziness has become commonplace.
"Anything is possible," Ball said. "I'd just tell them to go out and play their best game and have fun, and if they get the breaks, there's a good chance they'll win. … And if they do, well, you can tell those distilleries to start aging those barrels now."
Stranger things have happened.

Eric Crawford: Don't rule out another big upset this weekend

[Quality88]

I don't particularly care for this idiot, but he wrote a good one this time.