No time for a column proper — I hate my job — but I wanted to record some of the comments I’ve made over this whole Billy Reed article fiasco that Tru at A Sea of Blue has already addressed. First up, my comment I left on Billy Reed’s blog (which was awaiting moderation due to a hyperlink, I suppose):
Mr. Reed, you’re an accomplished journalist. Nobody can argue that. Your blog has been around for a while, so I take it you’re familiar with the way blogs work. I’m no dummy, either, so let’s call this post exactly what it is; flamebait.
Surely somebody with your journalism history, writing stories the past 40+ years, would not base a whole column about “rumors” which you cannot directly address. If you had a source, even an “anonymous” source, you would have detailed EXACTLY what Billy Gillispie is accused of doing.
Even your details — not taking Van Florence on away games — seem sketchy. Who’s asked UKAA or Van about this? Shouldn’t that be covered before publishing with the detail? I never had a journalism class, but isn’t basing your opinion in truth key in writing a solid column?
So there’s no way you actually believe what you just wrote. I take it you’re trolling for the Big Blue crazies that you read/hear about on catspause.com. Is this a chapter of your latest book that tries to rightly define the UK fanbase? Or were you just looking for shits and giggles?
Whatever the reason, you can’t fool me. This isn’t a Billy Reed column proper.
I forgot to add that another possibility is that Billy Reed is intentionally proving Stephen A. Smith’s missive that blogging causes “a total disregard, a level of wrecklessness” in sports reporting.
Meanwhile, ever anxious to stick it to the Wildcat Basketball fans, my good buddy GatorPilot stated Patrick Patterson made the wrong choice in coming to Kentucky. I think overall GatorPilot got what he wanted — a riled up Tru and Kentucky Fanbase, and a clever reference to the Indiana Jones movie. I appreciate the comedy combo he unleashed. But in the comments, I wanted to remind him of something:
What you Gator guys forget is that Kentuckians favor a good story over the truth. And they favor more being tied to the story — “my brother’s roommate at the game said,” “my cousin who works at Merrick Inn saw,” “my lawyer who knows Mitch had dinner,” etc. This has been going on for ages; its part of our culture. The Internet makes it public outside of the Bluegrass State.
So whenever I hear things like “Billy Donovan’s wife was horse-farm hunting in Lexington in March”, I laugh about it. Actually, it was several Billy Donovan rumors that completely convinced me that any rumor involving UK Basketball is no less than 75% full of shit.
In relation to all this, I agree with Chris at Intentional Foul: “Either show and prove or just keep quiet. Even the sports bloggers of the world seem to understand this.” (Well, except the sports bloggers who are fans of the opposition, of course.) But I would take it a step further.
Saying “my brother heard” or “my cousin saw” doesn’t count anymore. Bring out the proof, or shut the hell up.
Show me the videos of Gillispie drunk off his rocker getting into a car to drive home. Show me pictures of Gillispie near Lexington Police Chief Anthany Beatty the night that allegedly Beatty called a squad car for Gillispie to either take the coach home or to jail. Let me see the raunchy text messages Gillispie allegedly sent to a hotel employee. Let me see pictures of Gillispie with his 19-year-old girlfriend, that aren’t obviously photoshopped or from some social event.
This is a call for truth, not vandalism or paparazzi-type misery. If he’s truly this bad, it will be blatently obvious and recorded with something other than a “They Say” story. Besides, if any of these events were true, it would be best to get them right out in the open. If Gillispie’s poor conduct was outed, he would be forced to deal with the consequences of his conduct. Then we can all move forward.
Kentucky fans, bring the shame or stop talking about it. Stop feeding into the nonsense that you heard from whoever or wherever on the Internet. Until I start seeing proof, I call bullshit on every story.
Of course, I suppose nobody would be talking rumors so loudly if the team was winning instead of losing. I just checked the Houston score on ESPN Gamecast. *sigh*
Thanks for the link Gimel. And while we got stomped tonight, we were w/out Patterson and against a hungry Houston team. The jury is still out until I see a healthy Meeks and a healthy Patterson on the floor together.
I am discouraged that we keep making the same mistakes, but if we keep adding talent, we will rebound. I just hope Patterson stays long enough… if he bolts, it’s like starting over.
Thank GOD it’s still early. We still have time to field an actual team with Jodie coming back the way he did tonight and the SEC doesn’t look incredibly tough either.
So I’m thinking when we get Jasper and Patterson healthy to go along with Meeks, Bradley and Coury, will have a pretty decent starting lineup. But I think I might start Crawford because he has been playing well and bring Coury off the bench with Stevenson. Unless Crawford can accept the role of the 6th man and be a real force off the bench. Most NBA teams are going to the idea of having one of their top offensive threats come off the bench(Suns-Barbosa, Spurs-Ginobli-Mavs-Jason Terry).
I wish everybody would take a step back and breathe for a minute. Who cares what Billy G does off the court as long as he isn’t killing anybody or getting drunk at frat parties. People hounded Bill Clinton about his private life but he was still a great President. There’s a lot of basketball left to be played and call me stupid, but I think when we get healthy we are just as good as anybody in the league except maybe Tennessee. And think of how good we could be next year. I still see a team that plays with more effort than last year’s and that effort will pay off soon. I know we didn’t finish against UAB, but we shot lights out for much of the game.
This is the same thing we hear year in and year out at UK. I’m 23, and ever since I can remember, rumors regarding the coach at UK seem to be almost as legendary as our basketball program. Just like your article said, “My mother’s brother on her daddy’s uncle’s side twice removed said…” has always been things we’ve had to put up with rather UK is winning, which leads to rumors of the coach leaving, like we had with Pitino every year, or be they bad, like Tubby going to Atlanta or now with Billy G being a drunk.
Pesonally, I don’t care, let these people think what they want. In the end, it is only the ones toting these rumors around that look like Jackasses when it doesn’t happen. I think one of your last comments hit it clear on the head when you said that the rumors wouldn’t be taken so seriously if we were winning. I whole-heartedly agree. I’ll be the first to say that I thought we would be doing better this year than what we have shown so far, but I am also forgiving enough to see that with a new system of ball and a new coach, we basically have 15 freshmen on the team now regardless how long they have been with the UK program. Patterson is the white lining of this stormcloud however. He is buying into Billy’s system and he is impressing me. I just hope he stays long enough to make an impact. His work alone is showing me that Billy is going to win here, he’s going to win big, and I feel he is a coach we are going to have around for a long time, if the fans are willing to give him enough of it to get his system into play.