“If you look closely at the various forces at work in basketball at every level of the sport—the AAU programs that funnel players to college programs, the agents looking to land players as early as NBA rules allow, the shoe companies, coaches, franchise owners, front-office executives, players—it eventually dawns on you that they have one […]

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As he begins Year III in his reign over Big Blue World, King John is a wonder to behold. He’s easily the most popular and powerful ruler the kingdom has seen since Adolph The Great, who built the empire a zillion years ago. His style is a wondrous admixture of arrogance, charm, defiance, imagination, and […]

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I don’t know about you, but, frankly, I’m thrilled that the national basketball team of the Dominican Republican is training in Lexington for the FIBA Americas Tournament Aug. 30-Sept. 11 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. I am not sure what this tournament is all about, but I think it has something to do with the […]

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Good morning, class, and welcome to Character Building in College Sports 101. Our topic today is Mr. Tony Woods, a former student-athlete at Wake Forest University. When Mr. Woods was in high school, he was branded with a five-star rating in the recruiting meat market, at least partly because he stands 6-feet-11 and can run […]

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When St. John’s University fired Norm Roberts at the end of last season, Rick Pitino’s name immediately surfaced as a possible candidate. Unlike most of the Pitino-to-wherever rumors, this one actually made some sense. After all, Pitino is a Roman Catholic and St. John’s is the Roman Catholic university located in the New York City […]

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Kentucky’s first appearance in the KFC Yum! Center turned out to be a crisp and efficient victory not so much because the Wildcats have superior talent, which they do, but because John Calipari did the finest job of preparation and coaching in his short tenure in Lexington.
In crafting a 78-63 victory before a record […]

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The movement to bring an NBA team to Louisville has gotten to the point where it’s like watching the movie Groundhog Day. The same cast of characters, saying the same old things, over and again. The may be the only discussion that has been going on longer than the bridges debate.
Although I give The Courier-Journal […]

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Mr. Digger Phelps
ESPN Studios
Bristol, Cn.
Hey, Digger, this is your old pal Billy Reed. I just wanted to let you know that I thought about you during Notre Dame’s come-from-ahead loss to Kentucky Wednesday night in your least-favorite place in the world. Of course, I’m talking about Freedom Hall, the arena where you went 2-9 against […]

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If you believe, as I do, that the day is swiftly approaching when the BCS conferences will leave the NCAA to form a consortium of super-powers, then you have to wonder where that will leave the Big East, that unwieldy collection of 16 public and private universities who all have different opinions about football.
Eight Big […]

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I know, I know. The name of the University of Louisville’s new $248 million arena is as unbecoming and unwieldy as Freedom Hall was classy. The world’s largest food company, which is based in Louisville, coughed up $20 million for 10 years for the right to call the state-of-the-art, 22,000-seat hoops palace the “KFC Yum! […]

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