Louisville @ Kentucky Game Thread.

[Old School]

Wash St sure got spanked against a good PAC 10 team this week.

It's easy to rack up stats against not so good teams, much like our rushing defense. We were a top team early and when we got into the meat of the SEC schedule we dropped like a lead balloon

Alabama sure got spanked against a good SEC team this week.

It happens to the best of them.

[Old School]

Put this way Leach will never coach at UK anyway. So the argument is mute. This where stats don't tell the whole story. His defenses aren't that good. Not much if any better than what Stoops has put up. If Leach were here I highly doubt he would have put a record better than 7-5.

When has a team with Stoops at the helm performed anywhere near as well as this Washington State defense?

[KevinHall]

When has a team with Stoops at the helm performed anywhere near as well as this Washington State defense?

When was Washington State joins the SEC we can answer that question. Not until then I will stand by what I said. We will just agree to disagree on Leach.

[johnkyblue]

How many 5 star backs, and those OL UGA had, wow, allowed to hold all game too (we were too, just I think that amplified their advantage), did Washington State have to face. I don't pay attention to the Pac-10, maybe they do have a number 2 team in the country out there, that deserves it (tic).

[40bill]

Until we and the coaches get as excited about linemen as we seem to be about dbs, wrs and running backs we are likely to stay right where we are or get worse.

[Lighthouse]

Until we and the coaches get as excited about linemen as we seem to be about dbs, wrs and running backs we are likely to stay right where we are or get worse.

I agree totally. As I look at nearly every list of kids we're recruiting and think of how thin we are on the DL, I wonder why we're not looking for Big DT's.

[40bill]

I know from some of the boards that we DID offer several five and high 4 stars at the line slots, and lost out but I'm really wishing we would overload on some three or even two star prospects that have a high ceiling and see if they can redshirt and grow.
I don't know if it's to do with the 3-4 or what (and maybe the 3-4 is due to we can't find enough guys for a four lineman front) but we sure seem to bring in a large crew in the backfield.
Not real sure if we might not need to do the Mississippi State deal and raid the JUCO ranks even more heavily.

[Old School]

Interesting piece on ESPN about recent events at UofL. Unlike a lot of local coverage (from intimidated local media, it appears), this one talks about some of the gouging of taxpayers that has gone on - to an extent that hasn't been reported much locally. A lot of this touches on basketball more than football, but fans of both sports pay taxes and are affected by what happened there for years and the costs that taxpayers will have to bear as a result.

Some of it:

"$2.77 million annually over the past seven years and approved several real estate transactions that benefited the athletic department. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Jurich's perks included tax "gross-ups" -- meaning the university paid some of his taxes -- membership in three country clubs and premium seats at the Kentucky Derby..."

"Out of 125 FBS schools required to report financial data to the U.S. Department of Education, Louisville is the only one that derives more than half of its men's sports revenue from basketball, says Jonathan Jensen, a sports marketing professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Much of that revenue comes from a $238 million taxpayer-funded arena, the KFC Yum Center, which opened downtown in 2010 and has become a heavy burden on taxpayers. The lease was negotiated by Jurich and the arena authority. Under the terms, taxpayer contributions make up 75 percent of the arena's operating income while Louisville gets to keep most of the revenue -- an arrangement that "blew our mind," says state auditor Mike Harmon, whose office examined the arena's finances. "It was like, 'This is ridiculous.' It's like co-signing the loan for a friend's home and then having to pay three-fourths of the mortgage."

"Denis Frankenberger, a local businessman who has dissected the lease in minute detail, calls it "the biggest taxpayer scandal in the history of Louisville."

"In the arena's first year, men's basketball revenue jumped 58 percent, from $25.9 million to $40.9 million, a trend that continued as the program became the richest in the country. Under the lease, Louisville keeps 88 percent of premium seat licensing, 97 percent of suite sales, all program revenue and half of concessions...

"As Louisville was growing richer, the arena was failing -- partly due to the lopsided lease, partly due to tax estimates based on "flawed data," Harmon says. By early this year, the arena required a bailout to keep it from defaulting on more than $300 million in bond debt. Jurich's athletic department agreed to pay an additional $2.4 million a year. The public, meanwhile, was saddled with another 25 years of arena-related taxes totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. In the end, the arena will cost more than $1 billion, with taxpayers funding most of it. Despite the bailout, some experts fear the FBI probe's effect on the arena's primary tenant could be catastrophic...

"F. Chris Gorman, a former Kentucky attorney general, says: "I think that the tragedy here is this is probably the only community that uses public money to fund a Division I athletic program. That's what led to all this corruption...

"Jurich and his supporters predicted that the rising tide that accompanied Louisville's migration to the ACC would lift up the academic boat. Yet the university, which is ranked 165th in U.S. News & World Report among national universities, continued to languish. Between 2008 and 2017, Kentucky cut state funding for higher education by 26.4 percent. The disparity between the athletic department's soaring budget and the realities of a shrinking university demoralized faculty; some referred to the chasm as East and West Berlin

"Jurich pulled in far more than the $1.4 million base salary that ranked him among the highest-paid ADs in the nation. Including other compensation, he earned $5.3 million in 2016, which, as The Courier-Journal points out, was more than the budgets of the biology, English, history and math departments. Jurich and his wife have vacation homes in Clearwater Beach and in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Their son Mark, a former pro baseball player, was paid an average of $133,545 to work as senior associate athletic director for development. To circumvent Louisville's nepotism policy, most of that salary was paid by the Louisville Foundation. Earlier this year, before the Adidas deal was announced, Jurich's daughter Haley, who has experience in sports marketing, was hired by the company to serve as a liaison between Adidas and Louisville.

"Jurich sought to neutralize the scandals and shape the athletic department's image by controlling the local media, according to interviews with more than half a dozen journalists and media executives -- many of whom requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals from Louisville, even with Jurich gone. They described consistent and aggressive efforts to influence coverage, including abusive calls to radio talk-show hosts and executives by Jurich and his surrogates; threats to get advertising pulled from stations; and attempts to influence hiring and firing. Jurich denies he sought to influence advertisers or pressure the media. Nearly all of the media members identified Bob Gunnell, a public relations specialist, as Jurich's main surrogate and attack dog. The Louisville athletic department has a sports information group that employs 11 people, but contracts obtained by Outside the Lines show Jurich paid Gunnell's outside PR firm, Boxcar, up to $130,000 per year dating to 2014. Shortly after Jurich was fired, Gunnell cut ties with the university. He now represents Jurich personally...

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_...charges-excess