I Bleed Blue and White

UPDATE: Not to be outdone by his peers, former Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie was arraigned on DUI charges Thursday after being pulled over with a “strong fruity smell coming from his person.” I will not be having what he was drinking.

One of the subtle bonuses to having Jay Wright as your coach is that he rarely (has he ever?) puts his foot in his mouth. With nothing really going on in the offseason, we pretty much take for granted that the ‘Dapper Don’ of ‘Nova Hoops will hit up a beach somewhere, work on that tan, and enjoy life outside the spotlight.

Jay acts as smoothly as he dresses.

Other programs? Let’s just say the Louisville AD is probably still wondering what his coach’s point was today.

• Rick Pitino hastily called a news conference yesterday afternoon for…well, we still really don’t know. Ted Kennedy’s death was involved (a lot), but you’re really going to have to see this one for yourself.
• Not to be outdone, Isaiah Thomas is already causing stirs in his new post at Florida International. He’s threatening to boycott their opening game vs. North Carolina because they were supposed to play Ohio State. Since FIU will clearly lose to either, it begs the question of whether it actually matters.
• Dick Vitale is apparently on a mission to to clear Memphis of any wrongdoing. Because according to him, it is the NCAA’s fault that they were caught cheating?
• Bobby Knight has been inducted to the Indiana Hoosiers Hall of Fame. Whether he will attend is not yet known, but I’d imagine his acceptance speech could include downing a shot of whiskey, kicking over the podium and giving the crowd the bird. The possibilities are endless.
• After realizing that complaining to officials doesn’t stop your team from taking a beatdown at the hands of Jay Wright, Mike Krzyewski has actually decided to recruit big-time players in order to win.

…The Isaiah Thomas story cracks me up especially…he thinks that since he wasn’t there when the contract was signed that it doesn’t impact him…even after he’s gone from my beloved Knicks, he can’t go gracefully into the night…

Obviously, new news is hard to come by these days, since the offseason is in full swing.  With that said, there is some relatively important news coming out of the Big East.  There were recent reports that Louisville’s Rick Pitino expressed interest in the Sacramento Kings head coaching vacancy.  Whether he did or not is something I can’t be sure of, but today, Pitino told a Lousville spokesperson that he currently has no interest in the Sacramento Kings job or any NBA job for that matter. 

It’s always hard to judge the validity of some of these rumors, like the one of Pitino expressing interest in the Kings job.  He certainly may have, considering he’s been a head coach in the NBA before.  All in all, though, the Louisville job is one of the most coveted in sports, and I think Pitino recognizes that.  With his team falling one game short of the Final 4 this year, I think there will be extra motivation for him to prove he can take another team that deep in the tournament.  Just like when there were reports that Jim Calhoun might be retiring but he stayed, I like that Pitino is staying.  He is a huge name in sports and adds to the overall persona of the Big East. 

While I was in the student section during the Marquette win, I was getting periodical messages from Liz (a.k.a. “SportsGal” in the comment section) about this thing called “Interactive Tuesday” that apparently was going on during the game. What this exactly meant, I really don’t know. I watch a lot of college hoops, but it’s usually ESPN’s “Big Monday” and the weekend games. I thought I needed to clear some space in my Tuesday schedule to catch this phenomenon. But according to multiple outlets, it’s best I stay away.

It started with a BBM (for all you crackberry people) from Liz, who was venting her frustration that Rick Pitino had beaten Jay Wright for “better dressed coach” in a fan poll during the game. Now my initial reaction was confusion (what the hell is Liz talking about?), which was then followed by more confusion (how in the name of all that is good and pure can anyone vote for a coach besides Jay?), followed by anger at myself, because I was missing the game.

So in reality, I forget all about this whole mess. When I head over to Cracked Sidewalks today, I see this stunningly beautiful piece of writing from Rob Lowe (a contributor there). What I had discovered was that ESPN spent the majority of the game having stupid polls like “cheesesteak or brat” scrolling across the top, along with the announcers plugging it, in a shameless way to somehow get fans more involved. Because obviously a grudge match, shootout between two Top 15 teams is boring. Anyways, fantastic job by Rob here. The letter to ESPN’s Ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber reads quite eloquently, but manages to squeeze in gems like “failure” to really drive the point home.

But it doesn’t stop there. Even our own greyCat from Villanova By The Numbers is disgusted. (Speaking of greyCat, I love his work over there, but it hurts my head. I’m a finance major. I’m supposed to be good at math. And I feel like when I meet him, he’s going to tell me he was an Arts major. And then I’m really going to feel stupid and I’m not going to like him anymore. Sorry, I digress.)

Anyways, he shares the same opinion, which if you haven’t caught on yet, is not good. He also writes his own letter to ESPN, with perhaps the best line being “please do not inflict ‘Interactive Tuesday’ on another audience.” The bloggers are portraying this as a hate crime. I love it.

And then the final straw. The guys at the phenomenal blog Awful Announcing let everyone know that this isn’t the first time ESPN has sodomized a collegiate event with this non-sense.

Apparently, it was around for the football season. I’m trying to think about why we didn’t know about this. How were ‘Nova and Marquette fans alike completely blindsided? Oh right, we don’t have football (I kid, sort of). Anyways, despite terrible ratings, the bigwigs up in Bristol decided to torture hoops fans everywhere.

Now I’m really thankful that I was able to attend the game, and please accept my deepest apologies if you had to watch on TV. You did get one moment out of it though, courtesy of “Larry.”

Liz, if you want air time, you have to "embellish" your name.

Oh, by the way, that screenshot is of Dominic James’ second missed alley-oop of the night. That’s got to put a smile on your face.