Alex Raynor had an illustrious season for Kentucky last year, being named to First-Team All-SEC, as a finalist for the Lou Groza award and as SEC Special Teams Player of the Year.

As the record holder for the longest field goal in program history, and arguably one of, if not the, most consistent kickers to ever be a Wildcat, Raynor now looks to the NFL Draft in the next chapter of his book. 

Recently, at Kentucky football’s NFL Pro Day on Tuesday, March 11, Raynor kicked off the event with his workout. 

Although he would miss a routine kick for him inside of the 45, he would continue to move back, nailing a 55-yard kick and nearly making a 60-yard kick. 

The best moments of his workout came when Raynor would line up behind the UK logo inside of Nutter Field House and would nail a 65-yard field goal.

That, although it’s an indoor kick and is not faced with the NFL pressure, would be one of the longest field goals in NFL history. 

Historically, it’s extremely rare for kickers to be drafted any higher than the 6th, more commonly going in the late rounds on the third day. 

However, Raynor would hold as one of the rare occasions to go higher than projected, due to his historic year as a Wildcat.

Wherever the young man from Georgia ends up in the pros, don’t be surprised if you hear his name every reoccurring Sunday.

After charting a 4-8 record in the 2023-24 season, including a 1-7, second-to-last finish in the SEC, Kentucky Football looks lost for the first time in a long time.

It can be argued that the program never really broke through to the “higher echelon” of college football in the first place, but even then, they’ve been consistently better than they were historically known to be. Until now.

With that aforementioned .333 record, the Cats weren’t able to earn a bowl game. That marks the first time since the 2015 season that Kentucky Football won’t appear in postseason competition, and, excluding the 2020 season (for COVID-related reasons,) it’s also the only time the Wildcats have finished under .500 since then.

What about the last time the team had less than five wins? 2013, in Stoops’ first season. The deeper you dig, the worse it appears.

Losing to Louisville in blowout fashion at the end of last month felt like the straw that broke the Cats’ back. It was clear that whatever would happen next wouldn’t be simply transitional, and thus far, the early offseason has evidenced that.

The Big Move

It began with an exodus. Star wideout Barion Brown elected to transfer to LSU for his senior season. His receiver running mate, Dane Key, left for Nebraska. In addition to the team’s two primary deep threats, Chip Trayanum, the promising back and former Buckeye who spent much of this year battling injuries, took his talents to Toledo.

In total, the Cats have lost nearly two dozen players to the transfer portal, and that’s not even counting the guys headed to the NFL draft (like Deone Walker and Maxwell Hairston,) as well as the graduates.

To put it bluntly, next year’s team will share little more with the players from this past season than the blue and white on their jerseys. It’s a brutal overhaul, though one Coach Stoops and his staff are trying to get the jump on, to their credit.

Fresh Faces

Among a growing list of incoming transfers, a few names in particular stand out. Chief among them is Zach Calzada, a quarterback whose upcoming season at Kentucky will mark his fifth year playing football in his third different jersey.

The journeyman spent this past season at Incarnate Word, where he threw for 35 touchdowns and only nine interceptions. He completed 344 passes on the year, almost doubling that of his previous two. 

Before his two-year stint at IW, Calzada spent the beginnings of his college career at Texas A&M where, among a mixture of steadily improving statistics, he led the Aggies to an impressive home win over the still Saban-led Alabama Crimson Tide. Whether or not his recent success in the Southland Conference will translate back to the SEC is yet to be seen, but, at least on paper, this pickup makes sense for Kentucky following a year of unsparing QB play across the board.

Along with Calzada, the Cats have hauled in J.J. Hester, a 6 ‘4 senior receiver from Oklahoma, Dante Dowdell, a power back coming off a 12-touchdown season for Nebraska, and Sam Greene, a defensive end transferring in from USC, among a handful of others. We’ll have a team. 

Though, even considering the roster turnover, that wasn’t the question. That still remains, “what will that team do?”

Potential vs. Progress

Kentucky is 18-25 in their last three seasons of football; a steady decline that has been made worse by the fact that the program’s outlier 10-3 finish in the 2021 season has since been disqualified by the NCAA due to a rule violation. All in all, the last half-decade has been, at best, barely getting by.

How long will this trend continue? The only thing we know for sure is that nobody is sure. Answering that question requires the analysis and knowing of many moving parts, not all of which are at widespread disposal.

But this much is clear: the longtime variable nature of Kentucky Football came to a head this year, and the product we’re about to see is going to have to be radically different from the one we’ve just seen in order to right this ship.

For better or worse, the 2024-25 season will likely go down as the most important yet in the Stoops era at UK.

For better or for worse of college sports, NIL is here to stay and it certainly gives an advantage to schools with more money. Just looking at the SEC alone, collectives raised more than $200 million in the 2023-24 fiscal year. Unfortunately, Kentucky is ranked in the lower half of that.

According to documents from the House v. NCAA proposed settlement, Kentucky raised $11,254,204 from athletics collectives for the 2023-24 fiscal year. That ranks 11th of the 15 public universities in the SEC and is just more than half of the top collective, Texas who raised over $22 million.

Full Rankings

While collective funding is low, Kentucky has been a top 20 athletic program in total revenue, partly thanks to being a school that profits from its basketball program. Looking ahead to 2025, Kentucky is expected to stay in the top 20 nationally in athletic revenue, fifth in the SEC by bringing in an estimated 131,139,792. Ahead of programs like Georgia, LSU, Florida, and Tennessee.

With revenue sharing coming in the near future, even more money is going to be involved in roster and program building. Schools in the Big Ten and SEC have an even bigger advantage due to their new TV deals, giving them up to an extra $70 million or more.

A new era of college sports is here. It’s time to prepare and embrace it.