Matthew Zemek

LSU's national championship hopes are in doubt this evening, but no one's questioning the credentials of the Kentucky Wildcats anymore.

After a bowl victory last December, followed by a solid start to the 2007 season, the Wildcats had become a nice feel-good story under coach Rich Brooks and quarterback Andre Woodson. Big Blue cracked the top 25, gained a boatload of national publicity, and shed its longtime pansy status in the Southeastern Conference. That kind of resurgence — especially at a basketball school — qualifies as a substantial accomplishment in its own right.

For all of the 'Cats' conquests, however, the lads in Lexington had not yet made the death-defying leap that most college football outfits fail to make: the abyss-crossing, perception-shattering, barrier-busting step of vaulting from "nice feel-good story" status to "elite team, period." The distance between 8-4 and 10-2 in the college football world is not akin to a city block; it's more like the Grand Canyon.

Many teams will register "nice, feel-good" seasons on a consistent basis and be satisfied. Those who aspire to be elite, however, must possess enormous hungers not belonging to most mortals, for it is only from uncommon resolve that special accomplishments are forged. It is only from otherworldly levels of commitment that elite teams are born.

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