Message Board Thread of the Day

Actually, it's an entire message board.

The TCU site at Rivals.com is lightly visited. The message boards there get very little traffic, as the best TCU internet coverage and discussion is at www.killerfrogs.com.

The TCU basketball program has been mediocre at best in the last few years. Thus, bad basketball team + little fan interest + lightly visited site = dead message board. Enter the Big Blue Nation.

Kentucky fans have taken over the TCU board at rivals.com. This is priceless:

Kentucky Horned Frogs

Strange things happen when you have basketball fans from a basketball school take over the hoops board of a football school.

I spent 14 years in Fort Worth. I like TCU. I have several friends that went there. But, this is funny.

In spite of all that, Go Frogs!

(special thanks to Truzenzuzex at A Sea Of Blue for the mention in the blog today..)

Update, 10:10 pm CDT: Thanks to the guys at The Cats' Pause, this blog experienced a record day of traffic. With two hours left in the day, this blog has had 1,550 visits. This is a record, breaking the record set by Arkansas fans in January when I posted the email sent by a friend of Hog football coach Houston Nutt to QB Mitch Mustain. The Big Blue Nation has been a lot of fun today. Thank you, Kentucky!

Message Board Thread of the Day

In Kentucky, Big Blue Nation is still abuzz with the hiring of the program's latest high priest, Billy Clyde Gillispie. However, that is not the only change in the Kentucky athletic department.

Catspause.com currently has a two page thread on the athletic director's reassignment of the longtime secretary in the basketball office.

Basketball Secretary Reassigned

This is probably good for her. She wouldn't want to try to keep up with a coach that calls up players at 3 A.M. just to chat, and that sends 8,000 text messages per month.

Only in Kentucky would it be a big deal for an athletic department secretary to be reassigned.

Billy Clyde, Part 2

Last week, this blog wrote of a bidding war between Texas A&M and Arkansas for the services of one Billy Clyde Gillispie as basketball coach. The bidding war did not really materialize, as A&M offered him a raise, and he did not return the Hogs' calls to interview for their open head coaching job.

But, a funny thing happened as the Aggie Board of Regents was approving the new contract. Gillispie agreed to it, but decided not to sign it? Why? Because he knew he had a chance at the Kentucky job. Kentucky went after Billy Donovan first, was rebuffed, then turned to Gillispie. This morning, the Big Blue hired Gillispie as head coach.

This is a good fit. Gillispie is a tireless recruiter. He helped recruit great teams at Tulsa and Illinois, before becoming head coach at UTEP and Texas A&M. He performed quick turnarounds at two schools that were nothing but easy. He is an extreme workaholic. According to a story last month in the Dallas Morning News, he stays up all night watching film, and is known to call other coaches at 2 A.M. He usually does not make time to fix or go out for breakfast, choosing to grab peanut butter crackers and Dr Pepper on the way to the office. He has a 3,000 square foot house that rarely has food in the pantry or refrigerator. Recently, he went six months without grocery shopping. He is supremely committed to basketball, and makes fun of himself for his failed eight-year marriage. (His poor ex-wife. She was married to him when he was coaching in high school and junior college, not making any money, then he chose basketball over her. He happened to become a multi-millionaire as a result) His one outside interest appears to be horse racing. Kentucky is an obvious attraction.

The Big Blue Nation is equally obsessed with winning. They just ran off a coach because he was only making it to the second round of the NCAA tournament, and was finishing 4th in the SEC East.

I wonder, if in 1994, while he was an assistant coach at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, that he even dreamed he would be the coach at Kentucky. I doubt if it even crossed his mind when he took his first head coaching job at UTEP. UTEP to A&M to Kentucky in six years is quite a career progression.

He has what we call a shirt-tail connection to Kentucky. In 1987-88, he was the head basketball coach at Copperas Cove High School in Texas. His boss: athletic director/head football coach Hal Mumme, who went on to become head football coach at Kentucky before the program fell victim to scandal.

As for A&M, don't worry about the Aggies. They have gotten a taste of basketball success, and won't allow themselves to fall off the basketball map. And, Gillispie wouldn't have left there for just any job. Kentucky is not just any job. Most coaches would crawl to Lexington for that job, as Eddie Sutton said he would do in the 80's when he went there from Arkansas.

The Big Blue Nation is in good hands.

UUOTD-Sunday

We're still going back in time, but only to the 1990's.

In 1996, the Kentucky Wildcats were kings of the hill, winning another national championship. Rick Pitino could have been elected governor, before taking off to coach the Knicks. This was a great team.

The Cats normally wear a classic royal blue. The blue is synonymous with a basketball tradition that takes a back seat to no one.

Someone was not thinking straight at Converse, when they designed this denim uniform. I love denim, but it does not go on a basketball uniform, especially one for a traditional powerhouse like Kentucky. Kentucky had a great blue road uniform. They did not need to throw it away for this.

Thankfully, this uni was thrown on the ash heap of history, and the royal blue uniform was brought back. The Cats will gladly keep that national championship, though.