John Clay's Sidelines

(AP photo/Dave Martin)

Big Blue Links for Friday:

• Darius Miller ready to light it up this year for Kentucky, writes Jerry Tipton of the Herald-Leader.
• Stansbury, Calipari at odds over Kanter situation, reports Tipton.
• Calipari uncertain if Kanter will play, reports Brett Dawson of the Courier-Journal.
• Kentucky offense rolling like its 2007, reports Chip Cosby of the Herald-Leader.
• Randall Cobb among the best to wear the blue, writes Mark Story of the H-L.
• Georgia’s critical mission will be to corral Cobb, writes Mark Bradley of the AJC.
• Kentucky fined $25,000 for fans coming on to field after win over South Carolina, says H-L staff report.
• Four straight SEC games a grind for Jeremy Aumiller, writes Larry Vaught of the Danville Advocate-Messenger.
• New water polo team making a campus splash, reports Rachel Sarnovsky of the Kentucky Kernel.
• Cat Scratches has Joker Phillips’ keys to the UK-Georgia game.
• Kentucky will be a true test for Georgia’s new-look secondary, writes Marc Weiszer of the Athens Banner-Herald.
• Saturday night figures to be a big test for the Bulldogs, writes David Paschall of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

(AP photo/Dave Martin)

SEC links for Friday:

• Pat Summitt says remarks were not critical of Bruce Pearl, reports Dan Fleser of the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
• Pearl’s old contract terminated, new one in the works, reports Mike Griffith of the News-Sentinel.
• SEC East has gone from feast to famished, writes Joe Biddle of the Tennessean.
• A tired Auburn ready for another big weekend, reports Charles Goldberg of the Birmingham News.
• Auburn feels more equipped for its game with LSU, writes Jay G. Tate of the Montgomery Advertiser.
• Cameron Newton has brought sudden impact to the Tigers, writes Randy Rosetta of The Advocate.
• Alabama, Tennessee coaches are not strangers, writes Chase Goodbread of the Tuscaloosa News.
• Mississippi State football is moving on up, writes Brandon Marcello of the Clarion-Ledger.
• South Carolina needs to stay focused, writes Travis Haney of the Charleston Post and Courier.
• Arkansas defense plans to “do something” about Auburn loss, writes Robbie Neiswanger of the Arkansas News.
• Florida cautiously optimistic at SEC Basketball Media Day, reports Kevin Brockway of the Gainesville Sun.
• Chris Warren expected to expand his role for Ole Miss basketball, writes Brandon Marcello of the Clarion-Ledger.

From the SEC Basketball Media Day, and Jerry Tipton:

(AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

Ten random notes for Wednesday night:

Mike Zimmer still doesn’t like Bobby Petrino. The Bengals defensive coordinator was on the Atlanta Falcons’ staff when Petrino up and quit three years ago. The Bengals play at Atlanta on Sunday. Petrino moved on to Arkansas, but  Zimmer didn’t like that then, and he doesn’t like Petrino now, telling the Cincinnati Enquirer:

“I never even was there. When a coach quits in the middle of the year and ruins a bunch of people’s families and doesn’t have enough guts to at least finish out the year … I am not a part of that.

“You can put that in the Arkansas News-Gazette. I don’t really give a (hooey). I am serious. He is a coward. Put that in quotes.”

There’s more good stuff after that.

Because of early-morning conflicts, there may not be SEC or Big Blue Links tomorrow morning. I promise to catch up at some point during the day (or night).

Terry Meiners was the controversy of the day, of how the Louisville radio personality was apparently dumped from the Rick Pitino Show on WHAS-TV, and U of L basketball broadcasts. Then Rick announced at the Big East Media Days that he would no longer be doing his show. At least not for this year. Said he wasn’t happy with WHAS for covering the Karen Sypher trial, but that it had nothing to do with his decision. Yeah, and I’m going to start at quarterback for Kentucky on Saturday.

Jodie Meeks played an exhibition game last night in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Enquirer has a photo gallery from the Sixers-Cavs game. Look for Jodie in pics 14-15.

Some Facebook fans want Minnesota to hire Mike Leach. You can find their page by clicking here.

CBS’ Gary Danielson to Jon Solomon of the Birmingham News on every SEC East team having at least two losses:

“I think it underlines the fact — and I’ve been saying it for three years, to CBS executives and on talk radio — that the BCS was the greatest thing ever for the SEC but it’s broken. The SEC is going to look like the ACC very, very quickly, meaning guys are going to beat each other before you know it. What you take as good competition and great football games, it’s also potentially a conference out of the national title picture.”

Continue reading ‘Randoms: Mike Zimmer calls Bobby Petrino “a coward”’

Fox-41 in Louisville caught up with Terry Meiners to ask about the controversy today over Rick Pitino taking a year off from his TV show, and Meiners being told he was no longer part of the TV broadcasts.

I’ll be on and off here most of the day, so leave comments, questions, etc., if you wish.

Recently, Kentucky was in ESPN’s Top 25 football recruiting rankings.

In the latest rankings, Kentucky has fallen out of the Top 25, but the Cats are listed as being “on the cusp.”

As Chris Low reports, the SEC dominates the rankings, with Alabama at No. 2, LSU at No. 6, Florida at No. 7, Georgia at No. 9, Auburn at No. 10, Arkansas at No. 17, and Ole Miss at No. 25.

After practice this morning, UK coach Joker Phillips said that Derrick Locke did not practice and will probably miss Saturday’s game with Georgia. The coach also said that DeQuin Evans had a shoulder problem and did not practice. He is day-to-day, as well. Martavius Neloms practiced a little after his concussion last week. Phillips said he thinks he’ll be fine by Saturday.

Phillips also talked defense, Jerrell Priester, Georgia’s A.J. Green, having confidence about playing the Bulldogs and being a physical football team.

Terry Meiners

Update: Rick Bozich is tweeting from Big East Media Day that Pitino says he is taking the year off from his radio show. Says he was not happy with WHAS, but claims that was not the reason for the change.

Update No. 2: Lachlan McClean of WHAS radio wanted to make sure that I made the distinction that Pitino will not be doing his TV show on WHAS. Pitino is expected to do his WHAS radio show with Paul Rogers.

Via twitter, Terry Meiners has confirmed he’s been kicked off the U of L broadcasts.

He tweeted “true and correct” with link to my earlier blog post.

Then he tweeted:

terrymeiners Terry Meiners
Pitino TV show format fractured. I’m no longer host. No more farce halftime interviews, either. Read my wiki for details.

So we read his wiki:

In 2010, the University of Louisville switched from Freedom Hall to a new downtown arena, tossing out familiar seating assignments for longtime season ticket holders. Meiners publicly criticized[20] school administrators, saying that decades of fan loyalty had been ignored in the re-seating process to accommodate late line jumpers making fresh donations to the athletics department. In a live radio interview[21], Meiners asked a university fundraising spokesman about the number of prime seats school officials kept for its own use, whether school employees who received those free tickets were allowed to resell them “to enhance their compensation packages,” and about advance block sales of seats to ticket brokers before seats were made available to common fans. Meiners was soon removed from an upcoming charity golf tournament where University of Louisville athletics director Tom Jurich was slated to play in Meiners’ foursome. Meiners responded[22] by offering to buy two foursomes in the charity tournament, stocking the one in front of Jurich with four slow-moving octogenarians and the foursome behind Jurich with four long-hitters having “a delightful day of methodical shot selections.”

Shortly thereafter, a university official notified WHAS-TV of changes in the coach’s show[23] show format for the fall of 2010, resulting in Meiners no longer continuing to host the program[24]. WKRD-AM and WHAS-AM sports radio host Drew Deener[25] was selected to replace Meiners on the weekly Pitino television show under whatever format the university approves. Deener’s radio shows are consistently friendly to University of Louisville athletics.

To be fair, news was broken by  a tweet from KSR’s Matt Jones.

Update: Meiners confirms he’s out.

Our friend over at KSR is tweeting this morning that WHAS personality Terry Meiners has been replaced on all U of L broadcasts because of criticism of the school administration.

Matt Jones is also claiming that U of L is not giving access to Rick Pitino because of the station’s coverage of Karen Sypher.

Don’t know if this is true, but do know that Jones is friends with Meiners, and does the UK post-game call-in shows on WHAS. So it stands to reason he has his sources.

And thanks to @BigBlueBass, who led us to this Meiners-Pitino interview from years past.