Joe B Never Needed To Be Freed

Joe B has been freed or has he. The NCAA has blamed everything on UK and usually I’m gonna trash the NCAA from a reflex action. The first I heard about this was from Matt Jones at KSR and after reading the comments saying it was the NCAA’s fault I went looking on other sports sites for more information. I couldn’t find anything else so I figured good job Matt you got a scoop.

Now apparently the NCAA is saying it was UK doing it. My thoughts are pretty simple on this. When Matt Jones says “Well you can’t have anything good in this world without a certain parent organization coming in and ruining the parade.” its his fault. Its not hard to say if it was the NCAA or UK doing it Matt, its just hard to jump on your bread and butter. You got a scoop Matt but you owe Joe B Hall an apology for a post that started the crap that made him and us fans look silly.

Awful Announcing

Awful Announcing has become one of the links I visit daily just for the enjoyment of reading some good announcer bashing.

Many of us older fans grew up watching Monday Night Football and their trio of knowledgeable and entertaining announcers or listening to radio where sports talk was more important than sound bytes. Today with so many games being shown we listen to more crappy announcers than there are politicians running their jaws in DC.

Awful Announcing is having its final vote in their month long Joe Morgan Memorial Final, featuring Craig James vs Joe Buck. Not bad finalist at all.

Read their story here.

Being Kentucky fans we have been blessed to have so many great voices past and present, that I guess its natural to hate both Joe Buck and Craig James so give them your vote.

Tipton Moonlighting?

Just saw a story on the news earlier talking about the face of JESUS appearing on a register receipt. This one is right out of a Jerry Tipton moonlighting as a reporter story. LOL

IMG The Monster In The Closet?

Is IMG slowly becoming a monster hiding in the closet that sports fans should fear? In an example of how they are slowly spinning their web to encompass the money making NCAA sports. Tennessee recently signed a deal with IMG to market their football season tickets. 61,500 of its 72,500 season tickets have been sold so far this year but UT is still down 2,000-2,500 from last season’s total. Tennessee had just three sellouts in 2010, ranked sixth in the nation with an average of 99,781 fans for its seven games at Neyland Stadium, which seats 102,455. Facing figures like that and the disgust Tennessee fans are feeling they must have felt compelled to hire IMG’s ticket marketing division.

Some of what IMG provides schools as listed on their website.

Customized sponsorship marketing programs
Brand licensing
Multimedia services
Hospitality and event marketing
On campus marketing and activation opportunities
Athletic facility development, consulting and sales

I noticed a picture of Rupp and a Kentucky flag on their site so we must be doing some business with them. Anyone know what exactly the provide us in exchange for money that would be better spent on jobs at UK for Kentuckians. Sure it might cost us a little more but Kentucky fans are loyal and come to Commonwealth and Rupp no matter what type of team we field.

A Kentucky Hero Is Born.

Bruce Feldman was suspended today by ESPN after co-authoring a book with Mike Leach that is highly critical of Craig James.

From cbssports.com comes the following.

According to reports, Feldman was given the green light to proceed with the book, and he never engaged in any promotion for the book before or after its release. Non-issue, then, right? Well, wait:

They informed Feldman today that he has been banned from writing for any ESPN entity, is forbidden from appearing on any ESPN platform, is not allowed to Tweet from his Twitter account nor participate in any promotion of a recently-released book in which Feldman played a role.

According to Sports By Brooks Feldman followed ESPN’s rules about the whole writing issue.

According to BBR’s thoughts when your suspended by the big sister of the NCAA because Craig James is a crybaby you become a hero to Kentucky fans who have faced ESPN’s scorning behind the back jabs for years. Our hats off to Mr Feldman and we hope he promotes Coach Leaches new book to the max.

Louisville Media Guide

Its Louisville related but I got to give them credit for a good job even if it takes a little longer than 15 seconds to read it. Sadly though now we Kentucky fans can’t use it to light a fire while camping on the lake this summer. Guess we will just have to use the LHL if we can find anyone who still gets it.

Read it here

A&M to the SEC

Is it starting to heat up again in Texas. Some like Mr SEC are saying that A&M is getting serious about coming to the SEC. Read link here.

So do we want A&M and say Oklahoma in the SEC?

From a conference view I think yes but from a Kentucky view I say no. No reason to fear them in basketball but do we really need two more teams to kick us around in football?

One positive I can think of is that it will open Texas up for more recruiting and we might get some players from Texas. Some from our normal recruiting areas that the big SEC guys decide to pass on for a Texas player.

Another positive is more money from a new TV contract.

One negative is the fact that then there will be 14 teams scrambling for bowls and frankly is the 12th or 13th ranked SEC team going to make a bowl.

USA USA USA USA

The USA women won in a shoot out against Brazil. They played a player down for 55+ min. and scored in the 120+ min off a header by Abby W. Hope Solo blocked a penalty kick and the USA goes on to the World Cup semifinal game to play France. If your not a soccer fan this game was like playing with 4 players for 3/4 of a game against Duke and winning. Our women played their hearts out and refused to lose.

Stay Tuned

Russia knocked the U19 US team out of the FIBA tournament today. So is it coach Cals fault that the US couldn’t win without UK players. Surely one of our detractors will write something assigning the blame to him. Get your bets in on which speedster crosses the line first.

Jerry Tipton 5-1
Pete Thamel 9-1
Pat Forde 15-1
Field 22-1

Tressel and the 5 amigos ground OSU

There is some interesting things going on today. First Ohio St has put themselves on two years probation and vacated their 2010 wins. They are obviously trying to do the right thing but it would have looked better if they hadn’t played the 5 players in last years bowl win. As a football fan I don’t agree with the probation part the proper word to use is parole.

CBS also has a 5 part story on cheating in football. The first 2 parts are out.

Part 1

Part 2

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