Updated: 11:29 AM When Joker Phillips grabs the reins of the UK football program, he will become the seventh head coach I will have covered as a member of the media who work the beat. In some capacity or another, I go back to the early days of the Fran Curci era.

Posted: 8:22 AM Okay, I’ll ‘fess up. It was me. (It was I? I was it?) I’m the guy who asked Miami coach Charlie Coles the question that made him an internet sensation.

Updated: 8:06 PM It was a few minutes after yet another frustrating UK loss, this one at Georgia in 1989. Once again, the Wildcats had blown an opportunity to spill one of the SEC’s Big Boys; instead, they couldn’t get out of their own way and had lost, 34-23.....

Posted: 1:10 PM Thoughts scribbled on Post-It notes at Fountain Square in Cincinnati…

Posted: 4:59 PM It wasn’t inconceivable, writing about a UK football team that in 2009 could be setting its sights on a bowl appearance. A few years back it seemed possible. Only, what seemed likely was that the head coach would be someone other than Rich Brooks.

Updated: 5:05 PM It will come after the first loss; maybe after the first incomplete pass. The pleas from the “faithful,” the fans who believe they have UK’s best football interests at heart. They will scream, shout, cajole, implore – whatever they deem it necessary for head coach Rich Brooks to make a change.

Updated: 4:14 PM No matter what his level of culpability within the current investigation at his former school, John Calipari’s reputation always will precede him. And that bothers a faction of Kentucky fans.

Posted: 3:20 PM In 1983-84, I worked in the old Southwest Conference, back when Southern Methodist was on trial with the NCAA and wound up getting the Death Penalty. The program eventually returned, but it’s never been the same, and that’s a good thing.

Posted: 5:31 PM Baseball players, the dirty ones, already have squared up to a similar query, although it seems they’ve spent maybe a nanosecond thinking about it: Sure, there could be a lot to gain if I start shooting steroids – but what am I giving up?

Posted: 7:13 PM It took 72 hours, but I finally found it – ill will toward Mine That Bird. And I wasn’t even looking for it.

Posted: 10:16 AM Many of the national media, ignoring the excellent advice of the Herald-Leader’s Mark Story, are taking the “lazy” angle on the UK basketball coaching story. They’re invoking the “beware of the short fuse” argument against any coach accepting the job in Lexington.

Updated: 7:32 PM We had no way of knowing that Kentucky’s loss to Kansas in the 2007 NCAA Tournament would be Tubby Smith’s last game as the UK head coach. What has to be a bigger shock is just the suggestion that a loss to Creighton Monday night in the National Invitation Tournament could mark the end of the Billy Gillispie era as well.

Posted: 2:45 PM Sure, it was the NIT. Nobody - NOBODY - saw this team playing in anything but the NCAA tournament when it was 16-4 (5-0 in the Southeastern Conference). We all saw Kentucky crumble down the stretch, as no team has in a long, long time.

Posted: 10:24 AM E-mails, text messages, calls to “Sports Nightly” (thanks for those – keep ‘em coming), all reflective of the misery permeating throughout the Big Blue Nation. Basketball season shouldn’t be like this.

Updated: 1:18 PM A trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in the dead of winter? What’s not to like?...Turns out, almost everything.

Updated: 1:32 PM So you’ve just been handed the keys to the castle. You’re a Big Blue fan, your favorite coach at your disposal, and you have a chance to ask one – just one – question. What would it be?

Updated: 12:45 PM All the haters, the naysayers in and around the college football bowl scene, the media screamers, bloggers and talk show hosts (and callers) who say, "Nobody cares about the bowl games" - they're talking to you.

Posted: 8:51 AM If you’re not going to be courtside when a Kentucky player goes on a record-breaking tear, be sure to watch the game with friends, including a couple of ex-Wildcats who know a little something about how to shoot.

Posted: 2:02 PM Rick Pitino was in an upbeat mood, which you would expect from a coach who just saw his head-case-of-a-point guard, a guy who earlier that week he’d urged to transfer, hit a 28-foot shot to beat Kentucky on national television.

Posted: 1:48 PM This is the time of year when the football coaching carousel is spinning at top speed. Coaches go – they’re either fired, they retire, or they “get retired."

Posted: 9:01 AM In today’s college football world, a half-dozen wins, and a pulse, often lands you in post-season play. Start rolling your eyes now as a I date myself; I remember when there were just a handful of bowls, when eight and even nine wins might not keep your season alive.

Updated: 12:43 PM They were stories breaking on different sides of the country. One involved professional basketball, the other, college. At the center of each was one of the most storied teams in the history of their respective strains of the sport. They were similar and yet, each couldn’t have been more different. And “we” – members of the Big Blue Sports Network – had front-row seats.

Updated: 1:36 PM Unless something incredible happens soon, it will be known for quite some time as “The Lost Weekend.” Ordinarily, literary references can be fun. But in this case the subject is misery – back-to-back losses suffered by the Wildcats and the nation that follows them. It was a basketball-football double dip of emotions that left UK fans confused, sad and bewildered.

Updated: 5:36 PM The alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. Monday, signaling the end of the most ambitious – and draining – weekend your faithful correspondent has ever spent during his checkered career. On Friday, I was part of the radio broadcast for UK vs. Ouachita Baptist – basketball, in Rupp Arena.

Updated: 6:29 PM Three years ago, Randy Sanders said, “Enough.” He’d had enough of Tennessee fans, blasting him and his play-calling. He came into the media room at Neyland Stadium after another disappointing defeat and saw his two daughters in tears.