Fire Tubby?

According to some of the more popular rumors going around, today will be the day that Billy Donovan will be introduced as the new head basketball coach at UK. The press conference is (supposedly) at 4 or 6pm today in the Joe Craft Center. I hope it’s true, but I just don’t see it happening. Today that is. It was well publicized yesterday that Florida will be having their championship celebration on Friday. That would be one uncomfortable situation for Mr. Donovan. Nevertheless, today should be very entertaining rumor-wise.

Before I wrap up, there’s one small thing that I wanted to point out about the recent media coverage. One of the main talking points that a lot of the bigger national talking heads keep bringing up is how Pitino doesn’t want Donovan to come to Kentucky because he doesn’t want to play him every year. Really? Of ALL the different reasons that I could come up with for Billy D not to come to Lexington I don’t think Rick Pitino being afraid of playing one of his protégé’s would be on the list.

More as we read it somewhere else. Seriously we couldn’t break the Donovan to UK story unless his limo rear-ended us on the way from Blue Grass Airport. You do just come here for our wit, right?

Small update: I forgot to mention this. If Billy Donovan lands in Lexington today there is no way he signs that contract. Why? Yesterday the temperature was 81 degrees. Today? 39.

Looks like LEX 18 ended up breaking the story anyway. Have a look.

ESPN.com is reporting that our offer will be $2.8 Million a year for 7 years, with a possible $3.5 Million after incentives. Barring the incentives, that’s $19.6 Million for the lifetime of the contract.

I think Florida has the ability to match this figure, as Ryan has said. But I don’t see how they pay Billy more than Urban, which means Urban has to get more than the $14 Million over 7 years in his current contract. The numbers Ryan sites in his article means that making both Urban and Billy happy is doable, but whether it will be done is up to Florida’s Administration.

By the way, I have no idea who did that box-o-money picture above. If that is your picture, please let me know and I’ll be sure to give you proper credit.

The always lovely A Sea of Blue has a summary of that CatsPause.com rumor about Billy Donovan’s deal with UK all but done. Of course, WLEX-18 in Lexington, ran the story for their Monday evening news and are now blaming CatsPause.com for publishing it.

The editors and managers at WLEX have only themselves to blame. Their sports folks should well know that CatsPause.com publishes rumors along with researched facts, and had no business making this top story. Anybody who knows anything about television knows why WLEX went with this rumor: they wanted to be first with the story, so that during the next Sweeps Week, we can see commercials about how WLEX was FIRST with the Billy Donovan story.

Honestly, if Donovan comes to UK, I think WLEX 18 will still run a commercial about that, even though they’ve backtracted from the story.

I just hope Ryan Lemond wasn’t involved with this decision. I’ve enjoyed his friendly & joking presence for WLEX and on radio shows. Instead, I hope that the decision was made by the infamous Snarky Alan Cutler.

Speaking of Dynasty Defending Alan, I have to share this video clip of WLEX breaking the Tubby Smith story. They cut to Alan, but he’s not snarky, he’s giddy as a schoolgirl! (Thanks to WildcatThunder.com for putting this up.)

Anyways, you hear a lot of hyper Wildcat fans spewing a lot of hyper tales about how Billy the Kid has all but signed. This rumor that the UK Fire Marshall has been told to plan for press conference in Memorial Coliseum early next week is by far my favorite.

Meanwhile, every Florida fan I’ve talked to about Billy D leaving — save for Ryan — has stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed. Impossible, a lateral move, they say. I agree that’ll be difficult to sway Billy from his good thing, but I think Kentucky is the one program in the nation that can compete for Billy’s services. Ultimately, some group of fans is going to look really stupid: either the grandstanding “I have a cousin lawyer who knows Billy Bob Joe Bill at UK Athletics” types who are swearing up and down that the Billy Donovan deal is done, or the Florida fans who argue that they are a national power in basketball.

And if Billy stays at Florida, fortunately UK can acquire one of the “Plan B” coaches on the Intern’s list (from over at Kentucky Sports Radio). Although I’d skip Coach Carter and jump straight to Jules Winnfield, who has coaching experience.

Sorry, I don’t have any juicy rumor to spread around. Kentucky Sports Radio and The Cats Pause seem to have those well covered. Billy Donovan seems to be the leading candidate not only on our informal poll but also the collective opinion from the UK related sites. So as we commonly like to do around here I thought I would take this chance to play devils advocate and point to some contrary opinions of two coaching candidates.

First up is this Donovan article in the Chicago Sun Times. It contains this this juicy morsel of a quote:

A few years ago, his image was of a slick, underachieving, cheater. Now, he’s one of the coaching gods.

Four years ago, Mike Montgomery, Stanford’s coach at the time, told The Washington Post there’s ”one coach we all know cheats, everyone knows it.” And while he didn’t name names, he gave details that pointed right at Donovan. North Carolina coach Roy Williams dropped hints questioning Donovan’s ethics, too.

It’s amazing what a couple of Final Fours can do for you.

No one has pinned anything on Donovan. So you can ignore the accusations as jealous ramblings, or do as I do and fold the whole thing up and place it somewhere neatly in the back of your mind.

Hmmmmmmm, definitely interesting. Also in that article, the latest rumor involving Donovan is that he’s next in line to replace Pat Riley in Miami.

So you have a rumored cheater vs a proven cheater in John Calipari. Oh wait, maybe not.

Calipari has been painted with a tar brush ever since Camby’s confession. The NCAA deleted the school’s Final Four appearance from the record books for using an ineligible player. But there were no sanctions. And, in a letter obtained by the Daily News, dated June 8, 2004, Tom Yeager, the chairman of the committee on infractions, told Calipari: “The committee fully recognizes you had nothing to with the violations of Marcus Camby during the 1995-96 season. In a sense, you were an innocent victim.”

That was from the New York Daily News. Food for thought anyway.

A weird story about how Ric Flair was the motivational speaker before Florida’s game on Friday.

Ex-pro wrestler Flair pumps up Gators men

What the hell? Ric Flair? Really? Actually if you think about it Noah would make an excellent villain. He has that cocky arrogant attitude that just makes you want to hit him with a steel chair off the top rope. Or maybe that’s just me.

I thought this was funny from John Clay’s H-L article today.

Did Tubby agonize any more over this move than he did his previous eight?

“Let’s get this straight,” Donna said. “It’s the wife that does the agonizing. You know what they do; it’s like, ‘OK, see ya.’ We’re going (back to Lexington) tonight and I’m sure he’ll probably be back up here Sunday morning.”

Donna will be the one who has to “pack the house, sell the house, move the house.” It’s a bit easier this time in that oldest sons G.G. and Saul are out of the house.

“When we were considering it, we only had to ask our youngest son, Brian,” she said of the sophomore at Ole Miss. “He was like, ‘No. That is whack. That’s my home. Those are my people.’ And I was like, ‘You will have a bedroom wherever we move. And besides, after you graduate, you won’t be living with us anyway. So this was easier.”

Randolph Morris has left the building. For the New York Knicks and I can’t blame him one bit. It’s apparently a two year deal for $1.6 mil. I wonder if he would have stuck around if Tubby would have stayed? Who knows.

Something weird about this story, is that I read about it at 2:30 today over on Kentucky Sports Radio. That’s not very unusual because the crew over there usually does a good job at breaking stories such as this. But in this case it was by someone that left a comment. Check out this post over there. Scroll down to comments #129 and 134. This guy, Randy21, already knew. Very interesting.

By the way, I just thought of something. Does anyone know what Sheray was suspended for at the beginning of last season?

Kind of surreal don’t you think?

I was poised at the keyboard to try to capture a few quotes from Tubby’s interview today on ESPN Sports Radio. Tubby’s responses were faster than my fat fingers could type them, so I apologize if the following isn’t a verbatim record of his responses. Follow along after the jump.