As with the theme of this year in UK sports, good football news has trumped bad basketball news over the weekend. Joker Phillips, UK's offensive coordinator, has been named as the next head coach of the University of Kentucky. Joker will take over after Rich Brooks retires, which is estimated to be sometime around the year 2011. This is great news on several levels, and I applaud Mr. Barnhart on his foresight in this hiring.
Reason #1 - Rich Brooks is old, and old people tend to retire. You can't say enough about what Rich Brooks has done for this program. With the added continuity of Joker at the helm, Coach Brooks' endeavor to resurrect the Kentucky program will not falter after his departure. Oregon has been good since Coach Brooks left the Ducks, and hopefully Kentucky can do the same.
Reason #2 - The reason why Louisville is not good at football right now. Kentucky is not a destination school for football coaches. If we hired an outsider after Brooks' departure, a reasonable amount of success at Kentucky for the new coach would provide the opportunity to move on to bigger jobs - see Petrino. Joker bleeds blue. He is from Kentucky, and he played for Kentucky. This is where he wants to be, so hopefully success won't make him jump ship.
Reason #3 - If Barnhart had not of acted now, another school would have hire Joker as their head coach.
Two Things You May Not Know About Joker Phillips
1. He lives on the same road as our regional clothing director, Ricardo Chuevroni. Although, probably not for long.
2. Joker's wife mows their own yard. Let's see how long that lasts.
1 comment:
Glad to have you back BD. What kind of an excuse is work when you have a blog to run? Book rush, book smush...pick it up.
pd
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