Brown: Enjoy the 2023 Governor's Cup in Louisville. There's no telling when it'll be back

“To continue the long standing tradition of the UK vs. UL football contests …”

Those words, or a slight variation of it, began every letter Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart wrote his Louisville counterpart — first to Tom Jurich, then to Vince Tyra — confirming the contract extensions binding Louisville and Kentucky football to their annual Governor’s Cup matchup.

There’s a chance that long-standing tradition is about to change. Saturday’s game between the Wildcats and No. 9 Cardinals could be the last played at Louisville’s L&N Stadium for some time. And next year’s return game at UK’s Kroger Field could be the last — period — for the foreseeable future.

“Next year is locked in no matter what,” UK coach Mark Stoops said Monday. “After that, with nine (conference games), I don't know. Again, you know how I feel about hypotheticals.”

The SEC’s expansion with Texas and Oklahoma joining the league next season has sparked the momentum for a probable move to a nine-game schedule. Nine SEC games could stand in the way of Kentucky keeping Louisville as an annual opponent on the schedule.

Stoops has no desire to talk about what-ifs, but in May at the SEC’s spring meetings he admitted a ninth game would “complicate things” as far as keeping U of L on the schedule.

It took 70 years to renew the rivalry in 1994 and 83 years had elapsed between the times the game was played in Louisville when it finally returned to the newly christened Cardinal Stadium in 1998.

No one, on either side, is clamoring to bring the game to an end. Since the rivalry was renewed the game has been played every season with the exception of the 2020 game canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When you speak about the rivalry,” U of L coach Jeff Brohm said, “… It’s just a really big game that means a lot to this state.”

But the reality of this dilemma is understood.

Kentucky will be put in a challenging spot in which it has to weigh keeping the rivalry as one of its nonconference games or moving ahead with scheduling three games the Cats should win.

Stoops is 5-4 and that includes two losses to the Cardinals in 2014 and 2015 in the regular-season finale that prevented the Cats from reaching six wins and being bowl eligible.

Stoops is 28-2 during his tenure in all other regular-season nonconference games. Not one of those 30 games are against schools from Power Five conferences.

See where this is possibly headed?

UK would not take a big financial hit should it break the remaining six games of the contract that runs through 2030. According to the contract signed in 2011 and extended in 2014, ’16, ’18 and ‘20, if U of L could not find a “team of similar stature” to replace the game on the schedule, UK would owe $500,000 per canceled game. An additional $500,000 in “liquidated damages” would also be owed per game.

Considering the SEC is quite possibly holding out from moving forward on nine games to negotiate a bump in broadcast rights with ESPN, buying the contract out wouldn’t cause UK to dig deep enough to bring out pocket lint.

There’s an avenue that the game might not be totally dropped, just not played every season. It’s not a perfect substitute, but it is a better alternative than it not being played at all.

So enjoy the game on Saturday, folks.

There’s no guarantee it will be back soon.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville-Kentucky football series future in doubt with SEC expansion