Nobody asked me, but…
If the NCAA is serious about cleaning up big-time college athletics – and sometimes I wonder if it is – it should adopt a rule similar to the “trainer insuror” rule in thoroughbred racing. The rule stipulates that if an illegal medication is detected in a horse’s system, the trainer is automatically […]

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The thread that ties together the Billy Clyde Gillispie and John Calipari messes in University of Kentucky basketball are the incompetence and duplicity of President Lee Todd and Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart. The university’s Board of Trustees should call an emergency meeting to grill Todd and Barnhart. If they’re not satisfied with the answers, change […]

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One personnel move. One attitude change.  One light bulb going on in somebody’s skull. That’s how close the University of Louisville is to becoming a serious national championship contender. Every game, you think the missing ingredient is going to reveal itself. But it hasn’t, so far, and time is growing short.
Back in the 1980-’81 season, […]

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If I’m the president or athletics director at Georgia, and I hear that Bob Knight wants to talk with me about the Bulldog basketball coaching job, I’m on a private plane to wherever Knight is quicker than you can say, “Woof! Woof! How ‘bout them Dawgs?” And I’ll do whatever it takes to bring NCAA […]

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At one end of the possibilities spectrum, maybe Kentucky Coach Billy Clyde Gillispie is a genius who has a grand plan that only he can see. In this scenario, the Wildcats will coalesce at some future date, and then his puzzling personnel and strategy decisions will become abundantly clear.
At the other end, Gillispie is in […]

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INDIANAPOLIS – After watching Indiana fall to Gonzaga, 70-54, Saturday in the first basketball game played in Lucas Oil Arena, I see no reason to believe the Hoosiers can beat Kentucky. However, I also would advise the Wildcats to not bring their VMI or Miami game to Rupp Arena Saturday. The Hoosiers aren’t going to […]

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On the day CBS announced that Billy Packer’s 34-year run as lead network analyst at the NCAA Final Four was over, Packer appeared on his son Mark’s syndicated radio talk show. He seemed upbeat. He said it was a mutual agreement that had been worked out well before the 2008 Final Four in San Antonio. […]

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Tom Crean’s excellent adventure as Indiana University basketball coach took a really weird turn in April, when Eli Holman, a 6-foot-9 sophomore-to-be, came to the office to tell the coach he was transferring. During the meeting, Holman became so agitated that Crean, fearing Holman might be “a danger to himself and others,” called the campus […]

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SAN ANTONIO – So here we were, standing in front of the Hyatt, waiting for an ESPN car to pick up my friend, Robert Montgomery Knight, the noted college basketball analyst, and his entourage, which included his wife Karen and yours truly.
The fans materialized immediately, bringing balls and papers to be signed. A couple only […]

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I used to think that post-season conference basketball tournaments were established purely so that greedy college presidents and athletics directors could gouge even more money out of the fans and TV networks. I thought that conference tournaments cheapened the regular season and put unreasonable demands on those athletes who also took their academics seriously.
But I’ve […]

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