No excuse for UK's stiffing UMassBy John Clay
HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST
John Clay Spare me the everybody else does it.
Everyone else has an expensive new basketball practice facility, so Kentucky has to have one too. Everyone else pays their coaches exorbitant salaries, so Kentucky does too. Everyone else buys their way out of agreements they signed but no longer feel best fit their purposes, so Kentucky does likewise.
But when do you start being better than everyone else?
That's my question.
When does a university's athletic program start keeping its word, in the spirit of what universities are supposed to be about in the first place, i.e., integrity, education, molding young minds?
Whatever happened to doing the right thing?
The University of Kentucky signed a home-and-home contract to play basketball with the University of Massachusetts. Plain and simple. UMass honored its end of the deal by playing in Rupp Arena last year, losing to Tubby Smith's Wildcats in a December game.
Now Kentucky is shirking its duties, shamelessly paying the $50,000 out-fee to leave the Minutemen in a lurch. Reason: Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart and new coach Billy Gillispie want to schedule another UK home game against a directional school of their choosing.
It's a win-win, where the Cats look like losers.
Previous athletics director C.M. Newton did the same thing, canceling a contract the university had signed to play a football game at East Carolina. He also caved to Rick Pitino's demand that the Cats cancel a six-year basketball series with North Carolina -- a series Newton had asked Dean Smith for in the first place -- after Kentucky dropped the first two games. It was wrong then. It's wrong now.
But it's a bit more contemptible this time around, considering the Cats are sticking it to an alum in the process. Travis Ford is the UMass basketball coach. He's the former Kentucky point guard. He's trying to build a program in Amherst. Having a Kentucky come to Boston would help the cause.
But Kentucky says it's worried about its own cause.
The poor thing.
After all, how can the nation's winningest basketball program, which reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year, expect to win at an Atlantic 10 school that played in the NIT last year?
That's so unfair.
UK's associate athletic director, Scott Stricklin, pointed out that this is the first time Barnhart has exercised such a contract option in his five years on the job. Technically, that's true.
But Barnhart did give in to Rich Brooks' misguided request to shift the Kentucky-Louisville football game off its season-opener slot when UK plays host.
Brooks said he wanted time for his young team to prepare for the big, bad Cardinals. Considering that new Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe will now have a couple of games under his belt before his first meeting with the archrival come fall, we'll see how Brooks' strategy plays out.
Perhaps it's the same here. Perhaps Barnhart is only bowing to the wishes of his new coach. Maybe Gillispie doesn't want to play a tough road game against a UK alum early in the season. That's understandable. But also unacceptable.
That's where Barnhart needed to step in and do the right thing. That's where Barnhart needed to say, "I'll consider your scheduling requests in the future, Billy Clyde, but this year we have a contract. We're going to honor our word, just as we want teams to honor their word when they sign a contract to play us."
That's the way it should work.
For everybody.
Kentucky included.
www.kentucky.com/285/story/77328.html