The House of Blue

Stick your head in the sand but the stuff is DOCUMENTED. Why do you think Lee Todd brought Barnhart in? Why do you think we got K-Fund? Nothing I said was false and five minutes on Google would confirm everything I said.

What are you C.M. Newton's buddy? If you don't think the track thing is relevant how about the premiere basketball program in the country told they didn't need a basketball-only practice facility because "they were Kentucky"?

No one said he didn't know basketball! That has nothing to do with running an ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT!

I didn't call him a thief. What I said was he was using the Athletic Department as his own personal fiefdom. He traded access and tickets for favors. Why do you think fundraising sucked! Why do you think Barnhart and co. got massive blowback for the K-Fund system? Why do you think Lee F'n Todd mandated that everybody GTFO and told Barnhart to clean up and reorganize the utter disaster that was UK Athletics?

If you don't have any clue on the history of what was going on don't get mad when someone points out how wrong you are.

CM Newton did do a nice job with the pitino hire. Outside of that he was miserable. He ran our non-revenue sports further into the ground, he got us probation for our football program and he fleeced our athletic department for years after he left. He also left us with the joke that was Larry ivy.

Thanks for Pitino CM. Not much other than that.

No one is saying it wasn't but C.M Newton also didn't want to pay any money for Curry assistants (which is why they constantly turned over) and if you think how Mitch handed the fans were bad....he literally (and you can find the clippings if you want) told UK fans if they didn't like Billy Curry they could find another team to root for.

The information is out there. Go read some books, do some research, talk to some people and then inform your opinion. It seem you have nothing to back up then "He hired Pitino. He was a swell guy."

First of all you must be kidding right.

His job is not to make his search fun for any one.

His job is super tough when your hands are tied for cash.

Thats what alot of you dont get. He can't just open a wallet up and pay what ever he wants. This is not the GOV. LOL....

The way I've chosen to remember CM is that he was horrible at the money side of the job, but he knew what it took to be a good coach. I think he was our AD at a time when college athletics was changing, and he wasn't equipped to change with the times. He knew coaching, and therefor he knew what a good coach looked like. I don't know if the Kyle Macy thing was true or not, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe considering where the basketball program was at that point. We would have been able to find any number of coaches who wanted the job a couple of years after when Pitino took the job, but at that exact time it was going to be a dead end job for a couple of years. No quality coach wanted to leave their programs for a team that couldn't go to the NCAA tournament, and had no players to build on. If C.M. was about to throw in the towel, hire Macy and mentor him himself, I could believe that to be true. That doesn't mean that it was true, though. I personally have no knowledge one way or the other. What I do know is that C.M. found the man that was needed at that time. That doesn't get him completely off of the hook though. I can remember that a few years later when Tubby was the coach, the facilities for our head coaches offices were a complete joke. I remember seeing a video of them, and it looked like they were down in a basement. It was one long hallway of cinder block walls like you will find in an old public elementary school. This was a longtime ago, so my memory could be off, but that is the way I remember things. Rick Pitino led UK's basketball team to National Championship, and a runner-up. He also hired Tubby Smith, who led us to another National Championship. C.M. knew the game of basketball, and he knew a good basketball coach when he saw one. He hired us two very good ones while he was the AD here. Nobody can argue against that fact.

As for football under C.M., Commonwealth was in pathetic shape after years of neglect by C.M. Newton's athletic department. The football program itself wasn't in any better shape. The Bill Curry experiment ended horribly, and the reign of the glorified Texas high school coaches even ended much worse than that. One could argue that C.M. and his athletic department didn't care about football in the least. The lack of football funding, neglect of the facilities, and hiring practices certainly provide proof that things were, to say the least, leaning in that direction. The best thing that ever happened to the UK football program was the retirement of C.M. Newton. Larry Ivy wasn't any better, but I think he was the one in charge when the ends to Commonwealth Stadium were closed in.

The good thing going forward was that the areas where C.M. was lacking is where Barnhart seemed to excel. In terms of the degrading facilities in every sport, Barnhart had an extremely big job in front of him when he took over. It's taken all of the last ten years for Mitch to repair all the damage to UK's athletic infrastructure, but we are getting close to the promised land. We are pretty much equal to anybody out there as far as non-revenue sport facilities. The new Craft Center basketball practice facilities are probably as good as any out there, college or pro. We also have the state of the art new Wildcat Coal Lodge for the basketball team. Rupp Arena needs to be modernized, and after it happens Rupp will be the #1 college basketball arena in the country again. As far as I understand that project is being financed by the city of Lexington, so Mitch and UK don't have much to do with paying for it (I could be wrong about that).

The only sport left is football, and we lack football facilities like Washington D.C. lacks common sense. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go to catch up to our SEC competition. Barnhart had some time to do other things since Commmonwealth was given a facelift a few years before he got here. Then the addition of Nutter Field House helped a little bit, but was nowhere near enough. Football is the only weak link left and it's high time for Mitch and President Capilouto to get whatever bonding capacity we need. I'd like to see them set a goal of adding $200 million into Commonwealth, a recruiting center, and whatever else the football program needs. I'd also like to see our football budget increased considerably. Maybe we shouldn't be spending what teams like Alabama and Florida are spending on recruiting. No, we should be spending about 4 times what they do, considering they have all the momentum and history of success. If they are spending X amount to get top assistant coaches then we probably need to be spending 2 times X to attract the same level of assistants. After what I've seen take place at Oregon and Oklahoma State, I'm now a firm believer in the "if you build it they will come" philosophy. If recruits come here for a visit and see the results of money being spent on the program, they will take notice of that more than anything we could possibly ever say to them. I hope the hiring of Stoops is just the first step in a new direction, and will be quickly followed by a real financial investment in the football program. We have some positive momentum for the first time in a few years, and I'd hate to see it squandered and to see another good coach fail because they aren't supported by the University. Growth and expansion will prove that we are serious about football, anything other than that is just BS.