Running off at the mouth: Mike Bianchi lives to irritate Kentucky Wildcat Basketball fans
By Paul Jordan
If you team can’t beat the Kentucky Wildcats, don’t respect them … just keep on writing your ridiculous opinion pieces slamming the Kentucky Wildcats and their head coach, John Calipari. That apparently is the motto and life force driving the Orlando Sentinel’s “columnist” Mikey Bianchi.
There are advantages to living in Florida for sure: the beaches, the weather, and the attractions. But for the coast of living in paradise, you take the good as well as the bad. That means the humidity, hurricanes, tourists, and agent provocateurs like Mike Bianchi.
I’ve bashed Bianchi several times on this site before and it seems that as time goes by, Bianchi goes more from “journalist” to just a common blogger. Seeing that I pay just $18 for three months of the Sentinel home delivery now, it’s obvious the Sentinel is desperate to keep readers of their print edition. It seems that Bianchi is getting a head start on his blogging career by writing outrageous stories that are really just based on opinion … but he tries to pass it off as fact.
Seems that Bianchi has the ludicrous idea that most Kentucky fans are still conflicted about Billy Donovan and that we still pine for Billy Donovan and that we still have a love affair with Donovan:
Both Kentucky and Florida are in the Tampa pod for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, and that always presents a bit of a conflict for UK fans. The fact is, Big Blue Nation still has a love affair with UF coach Billy Donovan from his days as a UK assistant under Rick Pitino and the subsequent national titles he’s won at Florida. Kentucky, of course, tried to hire Billy D. away from Gainesville a few years ago, but Donovan decided to stay at UF
Lots of words but little facts here. First off, no Kentucky fan I know has any goodwill left for Billy Donovan. He has clearly drawn his line in the sand as a hated UK villain and it’s not like Donovan was a head coach or even wore the Big Blue. I mknow that the BBN supports our own and we are actually glad that Donovan excelled after spending a few short years on the UK bench, but still hold a torch for him? The fact that Rick Pitino said he now had “two children coaching at Florida now” (Donovan and Rick Jr) only cemented his lore as a villain,
Oh wait, two children? What are you saying Slick Rick? Do we need to do a DNA test here?
And rather than actually talk to Kentucky fans about Donovan, he simply turns to Gator alum and Orlando ambulance chaser John Morgan for insight:
John Morgan, the high-powered Orlando attorney who was born in Lexington and graduated from UF, is a huge Kentucky basketball fan, but he readily admits he would rather have Donovan coaching the ‘Cats than current UK coach John Calipari. Can you blame him? Donovan has been to three Final Fours and won two national championships. Calapari has been to two Final Fours and had to vacate both of them. …
Don’t actually know what John Morgan had to say or in what context it was, but I can think of about 150 bigger Wildcat fans in the Orlando area and none of them still pine for Billy Donovan. But all in all it’s the reality of being a Gator columnist during basketball season. Bianchi knows he is not going to get any hits or readers if he simply wrote an article about Donovan and this year’s team. In case you missed it, Kentucky had a considerably larger contingent in the St. Pete Times Forum this weekend than the actual Gator fans that went to see a game in their own state.
For that reason, I’m not going to link to Bianchi’s column. It’s not my desire to give him hits, but if you want to search for it, you can find it. It’s called:
“Kentucky basketbal fans still wish they had Billy Donovan instead of John Calipari”
Couple of things wrong even with that headline there, Mikey. First, you have to speak to more than one person in order to use the word “fans”. And secondly, this is just further proof that Florida fans don’t even know how to spell basketball.
You would think my $6 a month would get you a decent copy editor.
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