Here We Go Again

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Now on to the business at hand. We are all aware of the warning penned many years ago by George Santayana, philosopher extraordinaire, that went "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It’s a self-explanatory and trite but true adage that Santayana, in his later years, would tell over and over again.

The latest group who might have benefited from keeping it in mind could be those responsible for turning the University of Kentucky into a prep school for the National Basketball Association; Athletic Director, Mitch Barnhart, Et. al.

Mitch was also responsible for the debacle that became known as the Billy Gillespie years at U. K. By comparison, even former coach Eddie Sutton’s last year looked pretty good.

I could never get over the fact that Barnhart hired Gillespie even after he interviewed him. I sometimes even got the idea that interview might have taken place in one of Billy G.’s favorite haunts, and might have sounded like the conversation between Otis Campbell and Barney Fife when Deputy Fife was attempting to interrogate Otis after applying some elixir to facilitate that chore.

A. D. Barnhart followed up on that momentous decision by hiring John Calipari from Memphis, at the tidy sum of $4million a year. (And I thought that Tubby at $2 million a year was overpaid.) What did U. K. get for that money? A New York Yankees-style team, bought and paid for, that under performed at key points during the season. Oh, and a record setting coach, in that Coach Calipari has had two schools forfeit the bulk of a season's wins after making the final four.

What with the news I am about to relate, it might have been for the best that U. K. didn’t make that Duke game in March. Otherwise this might be the third school with that dubious honor. Yes, U. K. has a player, point guard Eric Bledsoe, who’s now under the NCAA microscope. And it doesn’t look good. It’s alleged that his high school coach during his senior year was paying the rent for Bledsoe and his mother, and that’s a no-no. In fact, if this is proved, Bledsoe could be joining company with Derrick Rose in having been declared ineligible after the fact.

Worse than that, if this is the case, U. K. is planning on the Memphis defense. (But YOU said he was eligible!) Didn’t work for Memphis, probably won’t work for U. K.

We can always hope that everything will work out okay, but from what I’ve read, this doesn’t look likely. U. K. may lose the distinction of having been the first school to reach 2000 wins, and fall to second place in the number of overall wins.

Well, I tried to tell them to hire Travis Ford instead of Billy G. way back when.  But would Mitch listen? No! Well, if worse comes to worse, let’s hope that the new A. D. at U. K. will.