Earlier this week, a few parents of baseball players at Philadelphia Middle School in Loudon, TN called to voice concerns over the practice strategy of Coach Brian Curtis.

Curtis, who has a boxing background, provided gloves and supervision to those students who wished to participate in a boxing competition, but reportedly did not force anyone to.  Curtis is now under fire from local school adminitrators for his unorthodox training regimen.  He does, however, have the support of other, more sensible, adults in the area.

Steve Oody says he has kids that played for Curtis for 11 years.

“I’m real thankful for what he did for mine and there’s a lot of other people that should be too,” Steve Oody said.

This is yet another case of the child-athlete’s parents trying to manipulate and control the environment of their children.

The bottom line, over-protective parent, is that if you are concerned with the way your child is being taught the athletics of choice, don’t let him play.  If you choose to allow your son to try out and make a school sponsored sport, under the direction of the school-appointed coach, you have relinquished your right to being the coach.

There are plenty of AAU and Little League options for youngsters with many available coaching and administrative opportunities for the parents.  But if you choose to allow your child to compete for his school in front of his peers, then do so knowingly.  And do so in full understanding of your role: a supportive parent, a cheerleader, a driver, and the provider of Gatorade and snacks.  Not as an instructor.

Stop harassing coaches for doing things differently, or even inventively.  Just pick your kid up, drive him to the local rec center, and sign him up for something else.  That is, if he’ll let you.

Or did she?

Now, anybody this side of Tony Stewart would call a win a win.  But, in my estimation, there are a few extenuating circumstances surrounding Patrick’s first trophy ceremony (look at the size of tha thing) that, in some people’s eyes, may taint the accomplishment.

Let’s look at a few:

It was the last race before the reunification of IRL and Champ Car.  Champ Car, formerly CART, filed a lawsuit in 1996 against Indy Motor Speedway owner Tony George after his decision to all but exclude Champ Car drivers from the Indy 500, effectively making them a second-tier racing circuit.  The bad blood continued for more than a decade, and only recently have the two sides come to terms on a merger which begins, coincidentally, next week.  So Danica’s win came at the last possible moment before the field of world-class drivers was doubled.  No one here is calling the win questionable… just a little convenient timely.

It was a fuel-mileage race.  By her own admission, she did not have the fastest car in the race, nor did she out-drive any other racer for the victory.  Rather, she–with the help of her crew chief–chose a bold and risky strategy to not pit for fuel, but rather drive the last leg of the race conservatively and hope her existing fuel tank would last.  This is by no means a new strategy in any racing series (see NASCAR’s Stewart at Kansas in 2007 and Jimmie Johnson 3 weeks ago at Phoenix), it may, to some however, lessen the accomplishment.

The race was held in Japan.  For all the dough Motorola and Andretti-Green Racing dropped to have the biggest name in IRL under contract, the winner’s circle interview was done on an island across the Pacific, in the middle of the night.  Yes, it made headlines all across the racing world, but when you bankroll a risky driver with unlimited media potential, you want that first win to come on national TV in primetime.  So maybe that doesn’t mean anything less to Patrick, but for sales of the RAZR, it might.  Also, this the ONLY Indy Racing League event outside the US.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to take anything away from the accomplishment itself.  But let’s be thorough here and all understand that this was by no means a dominant performance that established any kind of credibility that she’ll contend for a championship any time in the future.  Congratulations Danica.  Now we’ll see how it goes with a full lineup at Indy.

Yes, average reader, it is entirely too early for looking towards next year’s March Madness.  Honestly, who, at this point in the year, would spend time looking at next years college hoops season? Oh. Right.

What Joe made famous, Joe now delivers year round.  Let’s take a look at the ACC and SEC according to Lunardi.

Atlantic Coast Conference

North Carolina – 1 seed
Duke – 1 seed
Virginia Tech – 4 seed
Miami FL – 4 seed
Wake Forest – 7 seed
Clemson – 11 seed

What Joe doesn’t say here is who Duke will lose to in the second or third round.  Based on his early bracket however, it would be the Baylor/Georgetown winner (would the Earth implode if JT3 and Duke met in the second round?) or the survivor of the West Virginia/Gonzaga second round matchup (read: WVU).

Wouldn’t that be a beautiful site?

As always, North Carolina gets the early (pre-)season love, and Clemson deservedly gets a one-and-done spot.  The peculiar pick here is Wake at a 7.  Is Tim Duncan planning a comeback?  Maybe that’s why Dave Odom “retired.”

Oh, and I buy Miami-FL as a 4 seed about as often as I go to Homestead looking for a babysitter.

Southeastern Conference

Florida – 3 seed
Mississippi State – 6 seed
Kentucky – 6 seed
Mississippi – 8 seed
Tennessee – 9 seed
Alabama – 11 seed

Joe’s prognostications leave Felton’s SEC Tourney champion Bulldogs and Stallings depleted Commodores out of the field, which I’m not here to argue with.  No one expects much of Darrin Horn at Carolina this year, but leaving out the Razorbacks?  After a year under Pelphrey?  Joe, you’re letting us down.

After watching the last 2 SEC seasons, I’m also not convinced that we’ll see an even number of East and West teams in the dance.  And having veteran Tennessee squad as a 9 seed behind a Florida team it handled easily twice last season and behind a Kentucky squad full of question marks seems like a bit of a reach, based solely on returning players and high school/JUCO commitments.

I’ll take Carolina to make a late surge and get in the dance, and Andy Kennedy to coach his way out of it once again.  The SEC should look pretty similar this year with the exceptions of Vandy on the demise and Florida heading back towards the top.

Other than that, we’ll just have to wait and see.  (And keep reading Joe’s updates… right?)

[ESPN]

UT has long been lauded as the place where the greatest football fans in the world converge on Saturdays in the fall.  Now, for some reason, the Athletics Department wants to make it more difficult for students to get into the game?

It started 4 years back with the increased security (read: full body searches) at the student gates to keep out the criminals who liked to provide their own refreshments during the game.  It continued last year when UT banned smoking anywhere inside the stadium’s fences (yes, the outdoor stadium).  And now we’re gouging students to get into the game?

Starting this fall, UT students will be asked to pay for tickets to the football games.

UT students have been able to get into all regular-season sport contests, including football games, since the inception of the school.  Now they will be asked to pay a $90 football season ticket fee (on top of the mandatory $250 student activities fee assessed by the school), or $15 per game.

Come on, Mike.  You need that money that bad?

“The reason we didn’t (raise fees), frankly, is that a student fee affects every student on campus,” Hamilton said. “By actually charging for the football tickets, it’s a user-specific amount. Somebody can choose whether to purchase tickets or not. We hope that students will come and be a part of it and that they’ll buy all the tickets they have available to them.”

Hamilton also never bothered to take the input of those directly affected… the students.  An understandably perturbed student body president, John Rader, called it “lunacy.”

So maybe this fall, after UT cashes that mandatory check, and then asks for ninety more dollars to see the Orange and White play football, the students will open their wallets once more, for the tradition, pride and spectacle of it all.

Or maybe they won’t.  And if they don’t, I, for one, won’t blame them one bit.

You really dropped the ball this time, Mr. Hamilton.  You should be ashamed.

Most Cats fans were ecstatic about the 19-0 start.  What team’s fans wouldn’t be?  One question lingered entering SEC play.  How will the blue and white fare against major NCAA competition?  A few wins against Butler and Oakland look good on the win-loss stats, but they don’t strike fear into Georgia. 

So the Cats season was popping right along before SEC play and then they go all Vanderbilt basketball on us.  You all remember what happened to Vandy on the hardwood this year.  They started out 15-0 before conference play and won their first SEC game against the Gamecocks.  At home. 

That home court distinction is important as Vandy went on to play 10-6 basketball in SEC play with all six of those losses coming on the road and only two road wins to their credit (poor GA and USC!).  Even with their early exit from the NCAA tournament, I don’t think anyone’s ready to say Vandy wasn’t a top tier team this year.  Were they top 10?  Definitely not.  Top 25?  Well, maybe there’s some discussion, but you’re still pleading a tight case in my opinion.  But they were still a solid basketball team.

Where does that put UK baseball though?  Well, that SEC record sits at 7-7 (before Sunday’s Georgia tilt) and a little deeper look at their records unveils very Vany-like results.  The Cats are 5-1 in the SEC at home.  That puts their road record at 2-6 on the road.  Even if they take the series finale against UGA today they will still have lost twice as many on the road as at home in SEC play.

The Cats also lead the SEC in several key statistics as well.  Through 31 games UK led the league in batting average (hitting .350!), runs, ERA, and fielding percentage.  This means that the Cats have flat out played better baseball than anyone else in the league, against the competition they have played. 

So UK can put up some runs and can shut teams down when not playing elite competition on the road.  That sounds very similar to a Vandy team that ran off 16 straight to start the season and beat a #1 team at home late in the season.  What’s this mean to the overall sucess of the Bat Cats’ season?  Who knows?  They have 5 series left in SEC play with 3 of those at home.  They also have several mid-week games on the road throughout the rest of the season, but none of those teams (save maybe Louisville) are SEC caliber opponents.

So UK should put up good numbers down the stretch and continue to mount that win total toward 40 before the SEC tournament begins.  If the boys can get a little more mentally tough and continue to execute they will be able to make some noise down in Hoover this year.  Then a run toward Omaha will loom.  Here’s hoping that they can use all their talent and make some dreams come true this year.  If I’m John Cohen I put in a highlight reel of 2007-2008 Commodore basketball and ask my team one question.  “Do you want to get blown out by Siena in the first round?” 

Okay, so the season just ended Monday night, and players this way and that are declaring either one more year of school or their intentions to test the Draft waters.  Let’s take it a step further and lay out the most likely scenario for matchups this fall.

The SEC East, in order of 2008 finish:

Tennessee
G – Ramar Smith - JR –  7ppg
G – Scotty Hopson – FR
F – Tyler Smith – JR – 14ppg – 7reb
F – Duke Crews – JR
C – Wayne Chism – JR - 10ppg – 6reb
6th – Cam Tatum, JP Prince (although not at the 1), and Daniel West (at the 1).  Freshman Renaldo Woolridge has a legitimate shot at taking this spot due to his long body and ability to play the 2, 3, or 4.

Kentucky
G – Derrick Jasper – JR
G – Jodie Meeks – JR – 9ppg
F – Patrick Patterson – SO – 17ppg – 8reb
F – Darius Miller – FR
F - Perry Stevenson – JR 
6th – DeAndre Liggins and Ramon “The Alaskan Assassin” Harris, although AJ Stewart really came on strong at the end of the year for the Cats.  The question around Stewart is, will he be able to play full speed without playing stupid?

Vanderbilt
G – Jermaine Beal – JR
G – Keegan Bell – SO
F – Lance Goulbourne – FR
F – Darshawn McClellan – SO
C – AJ Ogilvy – SO – 17ppg
6th – Kevin Stallings doesnt know either…

Florida
G – Walter Hodge – SR
G – Nick Calathes – SO
G – Jai Lucas – SO
F – Eloy Vargas – FR
C – Kenneth Kadji – FR
6th – A trio of Freshmen will compete with Dan Werner for this spot: Rayford Shipman, Allan Chaney, and PG Erving Walker (who just might win the starting job)

South Carolina
G – Devan Downey – JR – 18ppg
G – Brandis Raley-Ross – JR
F – Dominique Archie – JR – 11ppg
F – Darius Morrow – FR
F – Mike Holmes – SO
6th – Darrin Horn will have slim pickins on the bench this year unless he is able to come up with a magical JuCo transfer real quick.  The only returner with experience is Lithuanian Evaldas Baniulis

Georgia
G – Billy Humphrey – SR – 12ppg
G – Terrence Woodbury – SR – 11ppg
F – Jeremy Price – SO
F – Howard Thompkins – FR
F – Travis Leslie – FR

So there you have it folks.  Now on with the prognostications.

I know a few UCLA fans that will take offense to even the question being posed, but as we were watching the National Championship last night, it seems a realistic inquiry.  Some of Coach Summitt’s numbers over the years are just downright unbelievable. 

Let’s take a moment to make a comparative analysis:

Summitt has coached in all 26 Women’s NCAA Tournaments, making it to the Finals in 13 of them (HALF!) with a ridiculous 8-5 record.  (Oh, also, she has had Tennessee in every Sweet 16 ever played.)

While John Wooden’s string of 10 National Championships throughout the 60s and 70s are no doubt the marker by which everyone is measured (including 4 undefeated seasons), he coached in a time when 4 wins would take home the crown.  Not to mention that his best mark, the 30-0 seasons, don’t quite measure up to Summitt’s 1998 39-0 year (a wins record that still stands).

Wooden’s 10-0 record in championship games dwarfs Summitt’s, at the moment, but Wooden coached in only 16 of 29 possible tournaments–55%–while failing to make the field in the other years.

So if career dominance is the debate, with the parity that women’s college basketball has of late, bringing home 2 consecutive national titles and 8 of the past 20 (all with 40- or 64-team fields), the edge goes to Pat.

The most dominant coach of all time.

If you want to debate who is/was the better recruiter, that’ll take a whole new column.

(And no, Kentucky fan, 4 titles in 41 years does not qualify Rupp for the dominance debate.)

The unexpected run through the NIT that UMass displayed over the past 3 weeks coupled with a premier SEC opening has led to several reports that former Kentucky standout Travis Ford is the next coach at LSU.

Ford has no doubt built a winner in a situation that has lacked consistent success over the past 10 years, but would LSU be right to hire yet another SEC head man (and Kentucky alum)?

The massive speculation has only increased over Final Four weekend.

Friday, Ford told the Boston Globe that he had yet to speak to anyone about the opening but stopped short of saying he wouldn’t be interested.

 ”Hey, I haven’t even thought about it,” Ford said. “But no one has called. That [attention] just goes with success, that goes with winning. That goes when you take over a situation that wasn’t doing very well and all of a sudden you get it back very quickly; if they’re even talking about that, it’s a tribute to this basketball team.”

As of yesterday, LSU had named a new AD, who will reportedly be in on the decision on whether to hire Ford or offer the job to someone else.

LSU announced Friday it had named Duke AD Joe Alleva to take Bertman’s place when he retires in June. School officials have said they want a basketball coach named within a week and Alleva may have a say in that task.

The search firm hired to headhunt for the position, Parker Executive Search, is still mum about whether Ford is on the list–or at the top of it, for that matter.

Should Ford land the role with the Bayou Bengals, he’d be the second former Wildcat coaching in the league (John Pelphrey at Arkansas) and would join Darrin Horn (formerly of Western Kentucky, now at South Carolina) as the conference’s coaching fraternity’s two newest members. 

The other current coach who attended an SEC school is Alabama’s Mike Gottfried, coaching at his alma mater.

[Boston Globe] [Mobile Register]

For those of you in the Central Kentucky/Southern Ohio areas, this “announcement” will do nothing but perhaps serve as a reminder to go to the dry-cleaners to pick up your nicest suit and/or big floppy expensive hat.  For the rest of you, today is the Opening Day of racing at Keeneland Racing Course in Lexington, KY.

Today opens nearly a month of racing, Thursday through Sunday, that includes a Kentucky Derby prelim in the April 12 Bluegrass Stakes.

The races, which start up around noon each day and run every half hour or so until about 6pm, are not the only draw to these historic, beautiful, and magnificent acres.  There are upwards of 40,000 tailgaters dressed to the nines standing in line for delicassies such as Kentucky Burgoo and a cool Mint Julep, and the betting of trifectas, exactas and superfectas that will make you rich.  Cornhole, croquet, and washers are the tailgating games of choice on these hallowed weekends.

Consider this not a commercial for Saturdays in April and October.  Consider this a directive.

We’ll see you at the track!

For all we know right now, Kentucky only has four scholarships to give for 2008-09. Miller and DeAndre Liggins (Findlay Prep in Las Vegas) signed National Letters of Intent back in the fall. Liggins was expected to play a combo-guard role, and Miller is a wing/slasher much like Hopson. Then, in the last month, Kevin Galloway (JUCO) verbally committed to Billy G. The Cats bring back Derrick Jasper, Jodie Meeks, and Michael Porter as guards. Ramon Harris and AJ Stewart, who both came into their own towards the end of the year, return as small forwards. Patterson will obviously (hopefully he returns without a hitch) play power forward. We should all hope and pray the “Mark Coury Starting Experience” will end, and Perry Stevenson should play center. That seems to show a lot of depth in the backcourt, and a lack thereof in the frontcourt. Was another wing-player, like Hopson, the answer? No.

Kentucky needs a big man in this class. Patterson needs help, he needs another presence so that he’s not getting double-teamed every time he catches the basketball. Apparently, there are options out there for UK. Kentucky Sports Radio always seems to be on the ball about UK’s latest recruits. Yesterday, they reported Maurice Sutton could be the big man who would give some depth in the frontcourt next year. There are also rumors that one, or more players may transfer before next season. Little used big men Jared Carter and Mike Williams would be the most likely candidates. Even if they were to leave, Kentucky would still need a big more than backcourt help.

This is not written in any way to discount Hopson. He could definitely have helped Kentucky next year. However, he is probably looking to be a one-year player (see: asking Tyler Smith to stay one more year). Kentucky fans will lament Gillispie, for sure, when Hopson comes to Rupp next year and drops 25 points and gets 10 rebounds. You can hear them on the call-in shows, “We got this dang Miller kid, and Hopson’s the real deal!” That may be true, but in Lexington we hang National Championship banners, and in Knoxville they hang Sweet Sixteen banners.

[ Kentucky Sports Radio ]