Posted: 2:57 PM Nothing makes the returning alums happy like a Saturday butt-kicking, and that’s exactly what the Gator faithful witnessed in Gainesville. Heck, they didn’t even need “Mr. Two-Bits,” the white-haired former cheerleader who whips UF fans into a frothing frenzy each home game by dusting off a cheer so antiquated, the Spartans borrowed it from the Trojans. Not the guys from Michigan State and Southern Cal, either – the REAL ones.
Updated: 4:38 PM Five years ago, the fortunes of Kentucky football couldn’t have been any bleaker. The corner-cutting by Claude Bassett and resulting NCAA sanctions had left the program looking like a cornfield after a locust festival. A team that had been mediocre for decades couldn’t even get cheating right and now, it had hit rock bottom. Rich Brooks was in trouble.
Updated: 8:35 AM Trying to figure out just where this Kentucky football team stands right now made me think of Joe B. Hall.
Updated: 8:15 AM The charter flight returning the football Wildcats from Tuscaloosa to Lexington landed Saturday night at 10 o’clock. They had traveled 916 miles (round trip) to learn what seemed to be very little about their team.
Updated: 9:03 AM It used to show up each week like so much junk mail. Kentucky fans wouldn’t give it much more than a passing glance; a peek, perhaps, and a sigh, tinged with envy.
Posted: 9:02 AM Right now, it’s easier to count teams in the Top 25 with one loss (seven in both the AP and USA Today polls) than it is the undefeated ones. Kentucky is ranked in neither, but just might end up there if the Wildcats can knock off Western Kentucky this Saturday night in Commonwealth Stadium.
Posted: 9:02 AM Dicky Lyons, Jr., said it best after the game – and if you heard him, you knew he was right. “The old Kentucky would have lost this game.”
Posted: 9:01 AM It’s the rationalization that always gets me. “We weren’t booing the player, we were booing the coach.” “I paid my money – I have a right to yell whatever I want.” “They’re not ‘kids,’ they’re young ‘men.’ They can take it.” “I was drunk.” Actually, the last excuse might be the best one. Liquid courage, as most 2 a.m. lotharios can tell us, far too often makes people say things they wouldn’t say in prime (sober) time.
Posted: 9:00 AM There was a lot happening in the sports world on Sunday. That’s why the UK-UofL football game was buried well beneath baseball and some NFL news on the late edition of “Sports Center.” The hose-job in Pittsburgh that cost Milwaukee’s C.C. Sabbathia his no-hitter commanded stories, sidebars and enough analysis to where all of us could re-create the play in a stupor.
