Sure most of us have bitched about him from time to time but just look at this season and you can see how good a job he’s done hiring coaches.

Both men’s and women’s basketball had a great year. Football went to its fourth straight bowl game and Mitch hired Joker rather than trying to go for a home run hitter. Women’s volleyball had a good year and look to have another one. Both men’s golf and men’s and women’s tennis are producing big time players. Rifle and cheer-leading are great as always. Baseball had a fair year and softball had a good year. Track had a national champion and soccer is improving.

All the programs are getting great athletes and have great coaches so hats off to Mitch Barnhart. Hes taken Kentucky to levels Tom Jurich can only dream about, that and Ricky P. in Italian diners.

Sgt Pepper had nothing to do with this but now the song is stuck in my head.

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Its Miller time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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But the Cinderella Vols believed they could win, and for 30 minutes the glass slipper fit in Rupp Arena.

Thats the way the story starts at govolsextra.com.

Its a given that Tennessee played a good game against the Cat’s and its a given that barring a complete collapse by the Vols and a few more arrests they will be playing come March Madness time.

I don’t mind giving credit where credit is due but calling them the Cinderella Vols is stretching the amount of credit I’m really able to extend them.

Don’t they know the story of Cinderella? For those of you who haven’t read it or at least heard of the story I will tell it to you.

Once upon a time there was a basketball team that lived in a conference call the SEC. They cried because they couldn’t win a national championship and a low and behold a fast talking coach magically appeared who promised them they could dance with the trophy.

Now there were a couple of problems for the coach to overcome before this could happen. They didn’t have any designer clothes but that was easily fixed by trips to the mall and the county clothing store. They didn’t have a ride to the big dance so he would turn a pumpkin into a shiny city car come time for the dance and low and behold their problems were solved.

Sadly their two wicked step sisters Kentucky and Vanderbilt wanted them to stay home the evening of the dance so they resorted to judicial magic to escape. The pumpkin changed into a beautiful car with pretty flashing lights and their rags turned into beautiful orange jump suits.

Of course we all know how the story turns out, one and done. It would be a sad story but they got to keep the beautiful orange jump suits.

I know I know its not that good a story but desperation forces a man to write something like this to compete with story like Cinderella Vols. Cornell advancing to the final four would be a Cinderella story but calling Tennessee a Cinderella is a sign or increasing desperation.

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Send the Cats some love via snail mail, so they will see how much the real Cats fan in the Big Blue Nation really feel about them. Will you please do this too? I am going to send mine right now to the UK Athletics office.

Here is the address:
Mailing Address UK Athletics
Joe Craft Center
338 Lexington Ave.
Lexington, KY 40506-0604
General Phone 257-8000

According to UK Athletics, the fax # is (859) 323-1071.

Please do this! Let them know the Cat fans are behind them. Thanks!!!

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Merry Christmas

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Here’s Charlie Manson crooning just for her in a Sunrise Show

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Patrick Henry once said give me freedom or give me death. I say give me one illegal immigrant, one gay man or woman, one poor boy from the mountains, one poorly educated boy, one well educated girl who understand that without paying the price freedom in America wont endure.

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The #11 womens volleyball team showed they are deserving of a top 10 ranking by defeating Alabama Friday night. The lady Cats (23-2, 13-1) got their 50th win at Memorial Coliseum in the last four years with the win.

Men’s basketball routed Clarion 117-52 with John Wall scoring 27 in his first game for the Cats. DeMarcus Cousins had 20 points, Patrick Patterson scored 14 and Ramon Harris, Darnell Dodson and Darius Miller had 11 points. It was a clean well played game with excellent play by everyone who touched a ball.

The football Cats won on Saturday with a 37-12 thumping of Eastern Kentucky behind two second half touchdown passes by Morgan Newton and all around good play by the team.

So what did we learn this week? In football Morgan Newton, LaRod King and Chris Matthews are going to be great next year. Donald Russell is probably going to see more playing time after his 79 yard run for a TD.

In volleyball the lady Cats can go deep in the NCAA tournament and with a little scheduling luck bring home a championship.

In mens soccer we learned that SMU probably looks forward to Tim Crone graduating.

In basketball we learned that the real wizard isn’t the the pretender from Westwood nor is he the fine dining coach from Louisville or the blue collar earth wizard from Michigan. He’s certainly not the dripping wizard from Tennessee who’s only claim to wizardry is his ability to cast a spell on the color orange or the cave dwelling wand waver from Connecticut. And lets not get started on the kettle stirring witches from Carolina or the seller of love potions from Kansas.

The real wizard is the Wizard of Lexington. The Wizard of Lexington is not just a wizard in coaching and recruiting. He’s also a wizard in the way he cast a spell that brought back our ability to laugh and enjoy ourselves during a basketball game.

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The same goes for the media today.  I remember a time when news outlets had to tell the truth and provide sources to back up those facts.  Certainly, the media has always shaded things, but at least you knew there was some sort of goal toward providing the bad so we could make educated changes for the good.  Our news sources were limited and those sources knew they had a captive audience.  Fast forward to today, and its just like TV.  We have 900 outlets of HD crap.  When I hear the term, “un-named source” why don’t they simply say, “Rumor”?  But the issue here is intent. 

Jerry Tipton:  It’s my opinion that he is the most vile “writer” ever.  His obvious disdain for UK wreaks in every word he writes.  Now, we find out, that he is resorting to lies.  Just in the past two weeks he tried to paint Patrick Patterson, who may well be the best thing that has happened to UK since Rupp, as a cheater by insinuating, without knowing, that Patterson was driving a “new” truck.  I’ll be honest in saying I did not read the article and my facts here are second hand, but I think all of you know this to be accurate.  He has also quoted fictitious NCAA rules in saying UK should report fans for chanting names of players.  The rule doesn’t exist and he even made up the code number.  The fact is, UK can not advertise recruiting visits or stage anything that would be outside of a normal student athletes day on campus.  They are not charged with isolating recruits from fan adoration.  Fans bring signs of players to games and UK can not police fans from bringing signs of recruits to games when they visit.  Why does he do this?  To me, it is obviously to degrade UK any way he can.   I don’t know why UK still issues him a media pass, but they do. 

Local media in general:  They still, for some reason, operate as if they have a monopoly when they obviously do not.  It seems that both the Courier and the Lexington Herald Leader feel that their online content is worth paying for directly beyond the numerous pop up ads.  Their sites are both turtle slow and their news is now well past prime when it finally comes out.  Both are having deep financial trouble as I understand it, and its easy to see why.  The consumer based market has always operated on the principle that customers will buy your product if it is what they want.  No one wants what these two papers are putting out as far as sporting news and they can’t seem to grasp that.  I will do a back flip the day that Tipton writes his final piece. 

Blogs:  So what do we resort to if the local papers can’t provide us what we want? Blogs!!  Fan-run sites that get the news and give it to us each and every second.  The two I will focus on are sites run by Mark Maggard and Matt Jones.  The goal of these type sites is to provide information from a fan’s prospective and both do that.  These two have also had a major war over fan support.  Most of you reading this probably visit one or the other but not both since this war has taken place.  Why the war?  On one side, it was suppose to be about money.  Mark runs a site with premium content.  Matt’s site has operated on the premise that news is free and shouldn’t be charged for and has used that for his attack on Mark.  And the fans?  They rushed like little soldiers ants to defend their generals which I thought was hilarious.   The problem today is, Matt is now stepping up to do premium content for Coachcal.com.  Granted, I have no problem with anyone who pays at a site or who provides, “premium content” for a site.  But in Matt’s case, he has bolstered his own following on the premise that he was totally against pay sites.   He drew the line, not us.  So it seems that his main goal is to step up in the “media world” and he doesn’t mind stepping on his little soldier ants to do it.  Two faced? Yes, in my book. As further proof keep in mind that he also operates by having his little soldiers find any and all news links that he then takes for his own on his site.  He does that, again, under the premise that information is free.  But just last week he was upset because a National outlet borrowed from him.  Never mind the fact that it was content he had borrowed from someone else! But he is a lawyer so no one should be surprised.  What he risks, however, is his ability to provide recruiting in-site as he does today.  Reading back to the NCAA rules, fans can talk about and post information on recruiters which is borderline when it comes to Matt’s and Mark’s site.  Anyone affiliated with the university, which would be the case if Matt provides content at Coachcal.com, cannot. 

So what is the solution?  How about a whole lot more of Larry Vaught.  You can find his blog at: http://vaughtsviews.com.  Larry is both a certified journalist AND a fan.  He is the absolute best of both worlds.  Yes, we want to know the bad stuff, only so we can demand it be fixed.  But we also want the good and there is a ton of good every day when kids go to school, play sports, and become better adults for it.  The Courier and LHL need to pay real close attention to Vaught.  They could certainly take back their share if they provided content on a moments notice in the form similar to Vaught.

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Well, it seems the Courier Journal has decided that their sports columnists’ opinions are worth paying for even with the forced marketing and horrid opinions and will start charging you if you wish to read them on the day they are printed.  So ladies and gentlemen, I signal to you the beginning of the end of local newspaper media as we know it.  The local papers have done such a horrid job of keeping up with the news in a way that people want it that most have simply stopped buying the product.  Why do these idiots think we want to buy their crap on the net if we don’t want to buy it from the stands?  I would think most people would still be supporting the local printed media if they half way did their job.

Let me ask you an insanely absurd question..  Would you pay an on-line subscription to read Jerry Tipton?  I can’t stand even reading what he says when they try to force it down my throat for free, assuming the adware they force on us is considered free!

I really do feel sorry for the support personnel at the Courier who will most certainly lose their jobs.  They are already required to take a percentage of time off without pay every quarter to off set the companies inadequacies. Now they must rely on us, the consumer, paying good money to read the BS we already attempt to ignore as much as possible.  Those articles have been nothing more than train wrecks for years!  You know it’s gonna be ugly, but its free so you gotta look anyway.  I’ve never known anyone that would actually pay to see a train wreck, and I doubt people would start now.

I would have to think the better option would have been to fire the holier than thou A holes that write for these rags and hire some people who could relate to their audience.  It seems to me that is what the local on-line media does that actually has a following.  All we can hope is that the LHL follows suit with the same plan as the Courier after they go belly up, or sooner.  The local blogs have provided information in a much more entertaining way and at a much faster rate!  What this means now is people will get the free version of the Courier BS a day later, which isn’t really that big of a deal other than I probably won’t visit so I won’t even get to enjoy their pop ups.

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