Freedom Hall was opened in 1956, three years before I began covering high school sports for the <i>Lexington Herald-Leader</i> at age 16. We have grown up together, literally, and I freely admit that the arena has aged far more gracefully than I. Heck, it’s still my favorite place to watch college basketball.
Yet after the current […]

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One of my first mentors and friends in this business was Billy Thompson of the <i>Lexington Herald-Leader</i>. In fact, he gave me my first job when I was 16. He wrote a popular column called “Pressbox Pickups,” and he always ended it with a series of notes under the heading, “Short Shots from the Sports […]

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PIKEVILLE, Ky. – Even if  Paul Patton had not been a former Kentucky governor, it would have been impossible to overlook him Thursday night at the Pikeville-Georgetown game in Pikeville’s downtown civic center. He was wearing an orange sport coat for which Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl would have killed.
“Had it made at Brooks Brothers in […]

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We all should be indebted to Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari for his kindness, generosity, and leadership – and I’m not even talking about anything he has done to get his Wildcats to 18-0 and on the brink of becoming the nation’s No. 1 team if they defeat Arkansas Saturday in Rupp Arena.
In response to […]

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Back in the 1950s, when I was collecting baseball cards, the manager Al Lopez had a coach named Tony Cucinello on his staff with both the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox. So when I heard that WHAS Radio had hired a talk-show host named Francene Cucinello, I had to e-mail her and ask […]

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Nobody should be surprised or outraged by what Lane Kiffin did to Tennessee. It’s typical of what big-time college athletes has become. In today’s world of multimillion-dollar TV contracts and coaches’ salaries, there is no shame, no honor, no loyalty, and no heroes.
This incident, and many others like it, are what happens, inevitably, when universities […]

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The Louisville Cardinals are a lot closer to being a really good basketball team than either the fans or the players themselves might think. I don’t believe they really have to change much. But what they must do is make a commitment to finishing plays.
I don’t know that if I ever seen a team make […]

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I’m a founding board member of the Blanton Collier Sportsmanship Group, an organization designed to promote coaching excellence and deplore coaching excess by stressing the principles of the late Cleveland Browns and University of Kentucky football coach.
Collier was both a gentleman and a gentle man – the Tony Dungy of his day. His methods were […]

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The Bellarmine Knights lost a tough one last night in Kansas City, dropping their season record to 9-5. This wasn’t what the prognosticators had in mind when they picked the Knights No. 1 nationally in several preseason polls.  Heck, if the Knights were playing in Division I, the talk shows would be humming with criticism, […]

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When Kentucky announced that Joker Phillips would become the head football coach whenever Rich Brooks decided to retire, I applauded the decision because (a) Joker had earned it, (b) it would guarantee a smooth transition, and (c) it would prevent rival recruiters from using Brooks’ age against the Wildcats.
Now that Brooks has decided to step […]

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