Since the bowl games are so bad, I figured you needed some entertainment. I am back and trying to be better. Let's make fun of people...

• There has never been a worse slate of bowl games. Take away the team you root for and tell me how many games you thought you needed to watch from start to finish. I will answer for myself: zero. These games are second-class. That is, in part, because college football is so down this year, but also because of some of the matchups. Who wants to watch two second rate teams like Boise State and TCU defensively struggle against one another? I'd rather watch two of the girls from Jersey Shore talk about who invented the poof. Or how about that "golden" matchup last night between Georgia Tech and Iowa? My TV told me there was too much yellow on the screen and forced me to watch He's Just Not That Into You. Again. People love to hate on USC, Michigan and Notre Dame, but at least they're interesting to watch.
• Rich Brooks was a good coach at UK, but is undoubtedly overrated. People will throw a lot of things at you about how great Rich Brooks was. He beat #1 LSU, he beat Auburn and Georgia on the road and he won three straight bowl games which had never been done before at UK. He should get congratulations for the first two, but the three straight bowl wins is what really irks me. This year, there were THIRTY FOUR (34) bowl games. No coach that coached before Brooks had as many opportunities to get to bowl games. The Music City Bowl, which Brooks won twice, had its first game in 1998. Brooks' bowl wins also came against Clemson, a depleted Florida State team and East Carolina. Those three teams aren't exactly a murderers' row of college football. He was also winless against Florida and Tennessee.
• Speaking of football coaches named Rich... How does Rich Rodriguez still have a job? He's a terrible football coach. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt when he came to Ann Arbor and had a bad football team in 2008. I was going to let him bring in, "his players." Apparently, his players are not as good as the ones Lloyd Carr was bringing in. Rodriguez was going to be bringing in stud players to get Michigan back on top. Well, Rivals currently has Michigan with the 18th best class for 2010 (no 5-stars, five 4-stars, eighteen 3-stars, one 2-star). It's possible to win in the Big East with 3-star kids like RichRod did at West Virginia. Ohio State will continue to beat Michigan if all they can get is those types of kids. Also, I don't mean to pick on a high school kid, but the 2-star kid that's committed is a white defensive back whose only other offers were from Bowling Green and Kent State. My good gosh, be better.
• John Wall is good at basketball. Just making sure you knew. I didn't know if you'd heard of him. He has a dance.
• Tiger Woods sent Christmas cards to: Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton, Mike Leach, Jim Caldwell and the Indianapolis Colts, every person who plays Fantasy Football, Jesus (a birthday card may have been more appropriate) and roughly eighteen women.
• Your racist grandfather should watch Purdue and Wisconsin play basketball this weekend. It will remind him of simpler times, when there wasn't as much scoring. And when there were more whites on the court than any other race. Everyone who likes good basketball will be watching any other game. Hell, I may fire up He's Just Not That Into You (on every minute of every day on one of the HBO stations) instead of watching that garbage. (Sidenote, how about Gage's first post? I didn't know it was possible to ejaculate through fingers while typing. I am pretty sure JaJuan Johnson filed a restraining order against him last night. Purdue will get respect when they get a legitimate win.)
• Jason Bay's contract with the Mets will be one of the biggest disasters since the Titanic. CitiField is enormous. Jason Bay is a power hitter. Manny Ramirez thinks Jason Bay is bad in the field. New York fans are unforgiving. Tell me how this ends well?
• Knoxville needs to build an indoor climbing wall. Seriously, the student athletes need something to occupy their time.

Here it is, my first post for Stadium Drives. I can tell by your silence that you've been on the edge of your seat in anticipation of my particular pearls of wisdom. So, how do I plan to endear you, the reader, to me? By demanding your respect.

More precisely, demanding you give some respect to the 2009-10 edition of the Purdue Boilermakers. Even more precisely, this is me complaining that nobody seems to give a crap that my alma mater is 13-0 with wins over Tennessee (before their players were in prison), Wake Forest (11-2 after a win over Xavier) and most recently West Virginia (the fighting Bob Huggins have been a top 10 team all season long).

I had the good fortune to escape from Holiday Family Time on New Years to watch the second half of the Purdue/WVU game. It was a beat down. I didn't catch a single WVU player's name, I was too busy giggling with glee.

Of course, then I tuned into see Temple get emasculated by Kansas the next day, just to hear the ESPN knucklehead announcer (apparently the A through D teams were busy that day) mention how "no disrespect to Purdue" but the other three undefeated teams (KU, UK, Texas) are all contenders. Excuse me while I write a letter to Awful Announcing...

more after the break... 

Just over seven years after taking the head football coaching job at the University of Kentucky, Rich Brooks handed the reins over to Joker Phillips earlier today.  Coach Brooks took over in late December of 2002 and rebuilt a Kentucky team that was mired by NCAA sanctions at the time.  Many people (including this writer) weren't sure about the seasoned Brooks upon his hiring.  My how wrong we were.

Brooks' first three seasons at Kentucky were predictably underachieving.  UK football's combined 2003-2005 record was 9-25.  Fans were sure there had been a hiring mistake and that Rich just didn't have the magic that he once found at Oregon (leading them from a broken program to the Rose Bowl in 1994).  The 2006 season was just the start of things to come.  Kentucky finished 8-5 and played in their first bowl game since 1999 (winning their first since 1984). 

Kentucky continued to post winning records over the next three seasons, finishing 30-22 over Brooks' final four seasons at the helm.  This included a nearly unprecedented four straight bowl berths.  Brooks' bowl record while at UK stands at 3-1.

The only mar on Rich's record while at UK is the continued ineptitude against Tennessee.  Considering the success the team has seen during his tenure, Kentucky fans can hardly complain.  What Coach Brooks brought to this program was a dogged attitude, an incredible work ethic, and for the first time in years, the belief that they could play alongside, and beat, elite teams in the SEC.  The 2007 defeat of (then #1 ranked) LSU may be Brooks' most enduring win. 

No one could have expected Coach Brooks to have the type of success he has had in his seven years as Kentucky head coach.  While many UK fans feel their team should compete yearly in the best conference in the nation, it took Brooks to make this a reality.  While he did not by any means get UK to the top of the conference, he knocked off several of those perennial powers and moved Kentucky out of their usual cellar-dweller role in the East.

Brooks also brought along, and continued to add to, a very strong set of assistant coaches and coordinators in his tenure.  All signs say Joker Phillips assuming the role of head coach will be a move that will continue Brooks' string of success in the Bluegrass.  If so, UK fans will laud Phillips as a great coach, but they need to forever remember the man that turned the program around and handed off a much improved product to Coach Phillips upon his departure.

Kentucky football fans missed the magical four-peat on Sunday night.  The Wildcats fell to the Clemson Tigers 21-13 in a tough, if somewhat uninteresting, bowl game in Nashville.  It was a tough loss for Cats fans, as they have gotten used to winning mid-tier bowl games by close scores.  No matter how many fans argue play calls and decisions by the coaching staff, in the end the Blue and White just didn't have as much talent on the field as the Tigers.

UK can't feel too bad about their season even after the bowl loss.  They just finished with a winning record for the fourth consecutive season. Kentucky hasn't done that since their run from 1946-1956.  If you are a UK fan, let that soak in.  Your football team hasn't had this level of sustained success in more than 60 years.  You're living in good times.

With that said, we'll take a look back and see how the season unfolded.

ESPN has released its annual "Quotes of the Year."  Here are my faves.  Yes, Ozzie Guillen makes a few appearances.

Full list here.

"It's not good when you light up two Marlboros at the same time at 3 a.m., washing it down with a glass of chocolate milk. You know you have a lot on your mind when you do that."
-- Tigers manager Jim Leyland

"One of our players 'broke wind' and only the referee heard it and he booked the player."
-- English soccer manager Ian Treadwell, explaining that one of his Chorlton Villa players received an "unsporting behaviour" yellow card for flatulence

"Because our fans are not stupid like Cubs fans. They know we're shit … Wrigley Field is just a bar."
-- White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, on why his team's fans won't come out to watch a bad product but Cubs fans will

"Before you say anything, just know I am the most powerful man in this building."
-- South Florida football coach Jim Leavitt

"It was 2½ hours of satisfaction and then 2½ hours of horseshit baseball. Go and ask them. I don't have any more quotes, seriously. What the fuck am I going to say? [Are] they horseshit? Yes, they are."
-- White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen

"Cheech and Chong would have had a hard time smoking that much."
-- Butler County (Ohio) judge Craig Hedric, on former NBA player Corie Blount claiming 29 pounds of marijuana were for personal use

There is yet another bullet-point in a string of seemingly endless secondary violations in the news today, and it involves football and Tennessee.  But rather than the Vols, it is everyone's smart kid brother Vandy in violation.  We can debate the perceived intent vs. accident and recruiting advantages gained all day long, but what the Commodores did here was host a somewhat famous juco quarterback (Jordan Rogers, brother of Packer QB Aaron) in an official visit... during the dead period.

The excuse?

"The coaches were unaware of [the dead period rule]," Rodgers said, according to the report.

Why is no one taking shots at Bobby Johnson from the peanut gallery like they did for Kiffin.

This violation is pretty black and white.  We're not talking about smoke machines or questions about when someone can or cannot call a player.  We're talking about an official visit when no other school was ALLOWED to host players.  That's an advantage over all 119 other teams.

Vandy's athletics powers-that-be didn't exactly have much to say about it either.  Says David Williams, VU vice chancellor (since, you know, they don't have an athletic department anymore),

"Do we have secondary violations here? Sure, we've always had them. I think the NCAA takes the position that pretty much everybody is going to have secondary violations. The important thing is that you report it right away."

Just like when you accidentally get hammered at the bar and make out with that slutty girl from Orientation.  As long as you tell your girlfriend first thing in the morning, no harm, no foul.  Right?

Maybe they're getting a pass because they're, well, Vanderbilt.  At any rate, what we do know is that if the Big Orange Brother had done it, you wouldn't be reading about it on StadiumDrives.com or buried in ESPN's lower quarter.  It would be in the New York Times.

The Drexel University Dragons are all that stand between the University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball team and 2,000 wins.  No other team in NCAA Division One basketball has attained that number of wins yet.  For UK fans, it's supposed to be a big deal.  There will likely be some celebration after the game, and for two or three weeks UK fans will be able to add "we're the only team with 2,000 wins" to every argument in which they would use the phrase "we've got seven national championships."  The big question tonight is does this really matter?

Tradition has meant a lot to college sports.  Twenty years ago every kid wanted to play basketball at Kentucky, North Carolina, or Kansas.  At that time every young man wanted to play football for Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Michigan, or Tennessee.  High school student-athletes wanted to play for these teams because they were good.  They also wanted to play for these teams because they had been good for as long as they could remember.

Past and present success isn't the only reason kids attend a specific college.  Another big reason, and one that only started to be prominent in the past 20 years, is exposure.  In 1991 you could attend many of the big name schools for football.  You could go to Michigan or Tennessee and play in front of 100,000 people a week.  Things changed a bit that year when kids started hearing that you could go to Notre Dame and play in front of 2 million people a week.  When NBC signed that contract things changed a lot.  Notre Dame, who was never lacking for a recruiting pitch in the first place, immediately had another edge on other programs.  They were still pitching tradition at that point, but in 1992 they could start telling recruits they would be playing on TV every week.

What happened at Notre Dame is actually very interesting.  They signed that big TV contract and twenty years later they're still hanging on to it.  The problem for Notre Dame is that every other major program in the country is playing on national television weekly as well.  In fact, after ESPN and the SEC signed a huge contract this past season you're now able to watch teams like Ole Miss, Kentucky, and South Carolina several times per year across the nation.

Now things have changed again in college sports.  Notre Dame no longer has the edge in pitching television coverage to recruits.  Like Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina in basketball, they can't fall back on their tradition to pull in every top recruit.  This is because the elite high school recruits in 2010 want to know what you can do for them.  What can you do for them that USC can't?  What does you university offer that Florida doesn't?  Can you offer something that Duke doesn't in college hoops?

If your answer is "we've won two of the last national championships in football because we have elite coaches and great players to play alongside you," then that's hard to turn down.  "Our coach has sent the last two point guard prospects he's coached to the NBA as lottery picks," is a good way to recruit point guard prospects.  "We've sent at least 5 kids to the NFL every year for the past 10 years because we have good position coaches and top-rate facilities."  Quotes like these get elite recruits to attend your school.  Elite recruits win ball games.  Winning ball games puts you on television more, gets you more top recruits, and creates a positive feedback system of success in your program.

Unfortunately, "we've won seven national championships", "our tradition is unlike any other", and "we won seven straight titles from 1967 to 1973" don't hack it in the recruiting world any more.  Hell, Wyoming has won a national title in basketball.  This information was contained in the broadcast of the Tennessee vs. Wyoming game the other night.  It's doubtful that Tyler Smith would have transferred to Wyoming if Heath Schroyer would have phoned him up and said "we won it all in 1943!"  Instead he chose to go play for a school close to his home, a coach who was charismatic and hot on national coverage at the time, and at a program with very nice facilities including a revamped arena.

There are obviously some kids who like the idea of playing for a big-time national power.  Many even say "I like the tradition at Kentucky/North Carolina/Kansas."  I call bullshit.  Most kids don't give two shits about tradition.  They really go to those schools because of Coaches Calipari, Williams, or Self.  They choose their schools based on system, facilities, and exposure.

Recruits don't want to know how many titles you won before they got there.  They want to know how many you'll win once they get there.  Kids these days don't care who Dan Issell or Clyde Lovellette were.  They want to hear about Michael Jordan, Paul Pierce, and Derrick Rose.  Young men don't care about becoming the leading scorer in the history of your program.  They just want to get to the NBA as fast as possible to have a chance at become the League's all time leading scorer.

These are all general arguments, but if you want concrete proof that kids don't care about tradition look inside the numbers.  The following are UK basketball, Notre Dame football, and UCLA basketball records from recent memory.  If tradition were still the king, none of these schools would have these type of down times.

Kentucky Basketball: 2007-2009 40-27 (0.597)
Notre Dame Football: 2005-2009 35-27 (0.565)
UCLA Basketball: 2009-2010 3-7 (0.300)

Kentucky goes for win 2,000 tonight.  They may beat Drexel by 17 and kick off a mess of confetti and a gaggle of bloviating fools talking about how great it all has been.  On December 22nd will any of that matter?  Not to me.  Only 7 of those 2,000 are really that important to me, and having 2,027 at the end of the year won't matter to me either if the last one ends up being an "L."

Who doesn't love this grumbly old teddy bear?  Here are my favorite Bob Knight quotes of the week.

Regarding John Calipari, with whom he had dinner in '07 and discussed DDM strategy.

"We've got a coach at Kentucky who put two schools on probation and he's still coaching. I really don't understand that."

"If the N-C-double-A had anything to do with this, the roof would leak, there would be no locks on the doors and the court would only have one basket."

And,

"One of the things I'm looking forward to is when our leagues get started and we bring in the coaches before league play, and I talk to the coaches about how they should handle the officials," he said. "I'm going to really enjoy that."

And my personal favorite, "That Grubby, he's a real up-and-comer in all sports rec-league for a former college athlete with a penchant for cold beer, and nearing 30."

Okay maybe I made that one up.

Would-be Minnesota hoop star Royce White is quitting college hoops.  And he is letting everyone, including UM athletics administration, know via YouTube, reported by the Sporting News.

During the long and rambling statement, White mentions racism, the justice system, college athlete stereotypes, and his coach, Tubby Smith.

"This ain't nothing between me and Tubby... He's the best coach I ever played for.  He's one of the best coaches of all time."

The guy was the #2 Power Forward coming out of high school last year, and probably could have had Coach Smith sit down and do this press conference with him.  But I get it, YouTube is easier.

Speculation has already begun as to whether he will attempt to move overseas to play for dough.

"What I'm going to do next is still to be decided," according to the video.

The end contains a Bible verse over the song lyrics "It's too late to apologize", Mark 8:36; "What profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul."

So this is odd.

NPR is reporting that the Bengals' Chris Henry (of West Virginia University) has died of injuries suffered in yesterday's car accident.

Away from the team because of a broken forearm, Henry was rushed to the hospital Wednesday after being found on a residential road. Police say a dispute began at a home about a half-mile away, and Henry jumped into the bed of the pickup truck as his fiancee was driving away from the residence.

Police said at some point when she was driving, Henry "came out of the back of the vehicle."

He was 26.