BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — At both the campuses where I teach, Indiana University in Bloomington and IUPUI in Indianapolis, there’s no building excitement about the NCAA tournament because neither school’s name will be called when the 65-team field is announced Sunday evening.
This assumes, of course, that IU will not pull off a miracle in the Big […]

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Short Shots from the Sports Whirl…
* The world’s best basketball player, Lebron James, sat opposite the UK bench during Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt and came on the floor to do the “Y” when the UK cheerleaders spelled out Kentucky. I wonder how many of the players were more awed by being in Lebron’s presence than […]

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He is somewhere overseas, deep in the heart of an economically poor nation. For hours, he has been standing in the back of a truck, handing out shoes to kids with wide eyes and raggedy clothes. The kids have never had shoes, much less brand-new ones. They aren’t sure what to do with the shoes, […]

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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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