With Florida kickoff at noon, Saturday is a major test for Kentucky football fans

Two years ago, then-Kentucky defensive end Josh Paschal fully realized how much No. 10 Florida was being disrupted by the frenzied atmosphere UK fans were creating at Kroger Field when he looked across the line of scrimmage on shotgun snaps.

Because it was so unrelentingly loud throughout that night’s game, Paschal noticed that Florida’s offensive guards were having to tap center Kingsley Eguakun to let him know when to snap the ball.

“He couldn’t hear the cadence. He couldn’t hear the (quarterback’s hands) clap,” Paschal said then.

In a lifetime of attending live sports events, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a game where the fans seemed to have a bigger impact on play than UK football backers did on Kentucky’s 20-13 upset of No. 10 Florida two seasons ago in Lexington.

Starting loud and staying loud, the Big Blue Nation helped harry the Florida offense into a whopping eight illegal procedure penalties — with the Gators even one time going from a third-and-1 to a third-and-11 on back-to-back false starts.

“The fans were killing them,” UK outside linebacker/rush end J.J. Weaver said that night.

With No. 22 Florida (3-1, 1-0 SEC) returning to Lexington on Saturday to face unbeaten Kentucky (4-0, 1-0 SEC) in what shapes up as a pivotal game in the seasons of both teams, one of the big questions hanging over the contest involves UK fans.

The energetic crowd that contributed to Kentucky’s victory over Florida two seasons ago came in a game that kicked off at 6 p.m.

This season’s Wildcats-Gators clash will start at noon.

Conventional wisdom is that crowd atmospheres, for myriad reasons, are not as robust for games with early kickoffs as for night games. So with a noon kick, can this year’s UK crowd for Florida come anywhere close to matching the intensity of the one two years ago which seemed to so vex the Gators?

“We need the crowd packed and we need them loud,” Kentucky head man Mark Stoops said Monday at his weekly news conference.

The stakes Saturday are high for both Stoops and Kentucky and Billy Napier and Florida.

In a test of UK’s ability to sustain Stoops-era improvement, the Wildcats are seeking their third straight victory over the Gators. UK has not beaten Florida in three straight seasons since Bear Bryant was roaming the Kentucky sideline and the Cats bested the Gators four straight times from 1948 through 1951.

If early lines hold, UK will enter Saturday’s game as anywhere from a 1.5- to a three-point favorite. For Kentucky, prevailing as the favorite over the team that beat the Cats every year from 1987 through 2017 is a different challenge than doing so as the plucky underdog.

It was defeating Florida in 2018 and 2021 that unlocked the path to 10-win seasons for Kentucky. In 2023, against a UK schedule back-loaded with formidable challenges, a victory over the Gators seems vital to Kentucky hopes for another breakthrough season.

“I know what we have ahead of us,” Stoops said Saturday, moments after Kentucky had polished off Vanderbilt 45-28 in Nashville in the Wildcats’ SEC opener.

Though Napier is in only his second year as Florida head man, a stumbling, 6-7 debut season last year followed by an uninspiring showing in the Gators’ 24-11 loss at then-No. 11 Utah in the 2023 season opener had combined to create a high level of UF fan unhappiness with the ex-Louisiana head man.

Florida’s 29-16 upset of No. 11 Tennessee two weeks ago in Gainesville sent a message to an impatient Gators fan base that Napier’s project of returning Florida to the upper echelon of SEC football had viability.

In Lexington on Saturday, against a team that the Gators so recently beat in 31 straight games, UF backers will be looking for another sign that Napier is restoring (from the Florida perspective) “the rightful order of things.”

Which brings us back to Kentucky fans.

Starting in 2021 through the first three home games of this season, the crowds at Kroger Field have been better — larger, louder, more into games — than anytime in years.

Having lost 14 of its past 16 games away from Gainesville, Florida would potentially again seem susceptible to a high-decibel road environment.

So as big a test as Saturday shapes up for Stoops and the Kentucky football program, it is equally so for the Big Blue Nation.

Without a full day to get fired up — and/or consume inhibitions-lowering adult beverages — before kickoff, can UK backers bring the same roar that so bothered the Gators in 2021?

“I have great confidence in the people of Kentucky that can get up very early and pound some beers,” Stoops joked.

For what shapes up as a crucial game for both Kentucky and Florida, what Saturday’s noon kickoff will mean to the fan environment looms as one very large variable.

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