LEXINGTON, Ky. - It's hard to find the right words to describe a Kentucky-Vanderbilt football game.

It's not really SEC football. It's more like Ivy League, which doesn't give scholarships.

Does this tell you anything about how riveting the action was?

Louisville high school English teacher Giovanna Godby spent Saturday afternoon sitting in the half-empty upper deck of Commonwealth Stadium, leisurely grading class papers with a red ink pen.

Godby's 13-year-old son, Max, was sitting next to her. At least she said he was her son.

I couldn't tell.

He had a brown paper bag over his head that said, "Please Fire Rich." I assumed he meant UK coach Rich Brooks. He nodded that was correct.

Have you ever tried to talk to someone with a bag over his head? It's hard to take a person like that seriously. Kind of like it's hard to take Vanderbilt and Kentucky seriously.

You'd wear a paper bag over your head, too, if you followed either one of these 2-8 teams. Combine their rosters, and it would still be the worst bunch in the SEC. The Commodores went into the UK game Saturday ranked 94th nationally in total offense; the Cats were 116th.

The Commodores snatched a 14-13 defeat from the jaws of victory by allowing a late Kentucky touchdown pass on a lame-duck wobbly lob into the end zone, which looked more like a punt than a pass.

Vandy closes its season at home against Tennessee on Saturday. The last time the Commodores scored a point against UT was Nov. 25, 2000. Three consecutive shutouts since then.

"I'm well aware of that,'' Vandy quarterback Jay Cutler said tersely.

"If we go out there and lay down like we have in the past, it's going to be ugly like it was in the past."

Did he say "lay down?"

That's exactly what 15-year-old girls Maura Duffy and Caitlin Shroeder were doing during the first half of the UK-Vandy game. They were stretched out flat on last row of bleachers of the upper deck as they tried to catch a few winks.

In fact, they were so motionless that I became concerned as I spotted them through binoculars from the press box. So I climbed up to the 39th row in section 214 to make sure they still had a pulse.

Maura opened her eyes and raised her head long enough to explain she was wearing blue because it was her favorite color, not because she was a Wildcat fan.

I apologized for interrupting her nap.

"No problem,'' she said.

Walking over to the last row of deserted section 218, I spotted Samantha Farhat and Alaka Bradley, 12-year-olds from Lexington. They weren't watching the game, either.

Instead, they were flipping through the pages of eighth-grade class pictures in the Southern Middle School yearbook. I asked if either one knew the name of Kentucky's football coach.

"I know, who it was last year,'' Samantha said. "It was Tubby Smith."

Last time I checked, Smith was UK's basketball coach. But, hey, it might not be a bad idea if he took over the football program, too.

I should have told Samantha to put her Tubby comment in one of the blue suggestion boxes spread throughout the concourses at the stadium. However, I remembered an usher had pointed to a slot where the paper is usually kept and said, "they took it all away."

It's probably just as well. You never know, former UK coach Hal Mumme might have planted people in the crowd to stuff the suggestion boxes to try to get his job back.

In two weeks, Kentucky closes its season at Tennessee. First, Vandy gets a shot at the Vols in Nashville.

"Last year we laid down for Tennessee," said Vandy cornerback Dominique Morris.

Perhaps they got the idea from the fans in the stands.

Gary Lundy may be reached at 865-342-6274.