LEXINGTON, Ky. _ On Nov. 17, 1979, Juan Portela engineered one of the most improbable moments in University of Kentucky football history.
Portela was recruited to UK as a walk-on. He was listed as a wide receiver when the 1979 Kentucky football season began. Yet Portela came off the bench to replace injured Wildcats starting quarterback Terry Henry at Florida and directed Kentucky to a 31-3 pasting of the Gators.
That afternoon, Portela hit star Kentucky wide receiver Felix Wilson with touchdown passes of 62 and 43 yards. He finished the game 5-of-6 passing for 141 yards. For the Cuban-born Portela, a product of Florida's Coral Gables High School, directing a beat down of the home-state Gators was beyond sweet.
"He got a chance to play and he went in there and beat Florida," then-UK Coach Fran Curci says. "Being from Miami, what a great thrill for him."
Says Wilson: "Juan ... wanted to beat Florida bad because they didn't recruit him coming out of (high) school."
In real time, Kentucky's 1979 victory over Florida did not seem earth-shattering. It was UK's third win over UF in four seasons. The 1979 Gators finished 0-10-1, while Kentucky would finish 5-6.
Yet in UK football lore, the magnitude of Portela's Florida showing grew and grew as the decades passed. Before UK's 27-16 victory at The Swamp last year, Kentucky had only beaten Florida once since 1979 _ a 10-3 win in Lexington in 1986 _ and had not won again in Gainesville.
As that UK football futility against Florida built, it raised the curiosity factor about Portela.
"But he just went to Miami and disappeared," Curci says. "For years, I didn't know where he was, what he had been doing."
