Credit where it’s due. It’s easy to make fun here with a keyboard, broadband connection, potty mouth, willing editor and readership salivating for nasty gossip about hated rivals. Like all humans, often I get it wrong. So it has been with Rich Brooks. The guy appeared an easy target. But Brooks has built a solid, feisty squad up there in Lexington and he (and the team) deserve all the accolades coming their way. UK’s game against LSU was a masterpiece. The team was calm, resolute, determined, gritty, tough, focused and eminently ready for the W. Brooks showed maturity and confidence in his players. Down six, he went for three with 6:54 on the clock, while stalwarts wondered if the Cats’ D could hold No. 1 and get another scoring opportunity. They did. On, on UK!!!
Yummy! U of L’s new facility housing women’s lacrosse and volleyball, as well as men’s hoops, is stunning and state of the art. Media types were given a look-see last week before the dedication. We were shown every nook and cranny including the men’s (done in cherry) and women’s (done in oak) locker rooms and showers, conditioning and weight rooms. Everything, that is, except for the Inner Sanctum. No access granted to the men’s basketball coaches’ offices.
Want more football? Go to ticketreserve.com and order your seats for a possible Louisville franchise in the upstart United Football League (“featuring real outdoor professional football played in the fall”). Twelve cities have been targeted for teams. The eight that sell the most tickets “will be designated as the leading markets to host a franchise.”
SchnellSpeak of the week. The team with a Coach Whose Team Is Always On A Collision Course had the week off. Final score: FAU zip, Open Date zip. The Fighting Owls meet Louisiana Lafayette this week. So we’ll take a week off also. College football’s poet laureate has given us enough eloquence already this season to ruminate upon. OK, one last English Professor Schnell bon mot left over from FAU’s narrow loss to South Florida: “It was a William Shakespeare tale out there. It was really hard to analyze at the end.”
BY SEEDY K
seedyk@culturemaven.com
This article appears in October 16, 2007.