When Good Intentions go Bad: How Kentucky Sports Radio tried to Undermine Joker Phillips

Writing for a fan blog is much different than writing for a newspaper, a magazine, or even hosting a television show. You are allowed to say things that you normally would not say in those other forms of journalism and you are definitely allowed to show bias. Nobody that logs on to a fan blog is logging on to see good, unbiased journalism. They want to read about how fantastic their team is and how much their rival teams stink.

Take me for instance. I take a lot of shots at Louisville basketball head coach Rick Pitino. Some of those shots are fair, many of them are not. I definitely say some things about the man that I would not if I was writing for the Courier-Journal or the Lexington Herald Leader. I take shots at him in order to make my audience laugh and in order to make John Calipari look, in comparison, like a saint.

Do I mean everything I write about Rick Pitino? Of course not. I may make fun of the man, call him names and try to make him look ridiculous, but it’s all in the nature of the rivalry and what I write has been said 1,000 times over by Kentucky and Louisville fans alike.

Yes, I like to make fun of Wildcat rivals. What about actual Wildcat players and coaches? As a fan, I generally try and stay as positive as I can. After all, I view them all as one of my own. These are the individuals that come together in order to create the team that I so vehemently cheer for so why would I want to make them look bad?

Does that mean Kentucky players and coaches are above criticism? Absolutely not. I recently wrote an article that openly questioned whether or not John Calipari’s trash talk actually hurt or helped his basketball team.

Our football team has been rather awful this entire year. You can search this site and you can find plenty of posts with negative subject matter about the team, the direction it is going in and the coaches involved. One thing we have not done is call for head coach Joker Phillips to be fired.

Kentucky Sports Radio has pegged itself as THE fan blog for the Big Blue Nation. Their site is the go to place for the latest recruiting news, comedy and some analysis. They do what they do, and they do a good job of it.

One thing they have prided themselves on in the past is not being a part of the main stream media. They have openly feuded with Lexington Herald Leader columnist Jerry Tipton for being negative about the Wildcats and for conducting questionable interviews with players and coaches alike.

Kentucky Sports Radio should realize that they have turned into the type of UK outlet that they claim to despise with their handling of the Joker Phillips situation.

They nail Tipton for being negative, yet they say that Joker Phillips has lost the team and the entire Kentucky fan base without a shred of tangible evidence. They throw stones at him for a very strange interview with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist but at the same time they decide to interview football coach Mike Leach about the Kentucky football coaching job while Joker Phillips is still sitting as the head coach at the University of Kentucky.

This is not an indictment on Mike Leach. In fact, Leach dodged the question when Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones asked him that if the football job was “hypothetically” open, would he take it. Leach dodged, Jones came back and asked later, Leach said he would.

Why on earth would Kentucky Sports Radio want to interview Mike Leach other than to try and undermine Joker Phillips? Time and time again KSR (as they are called by fans) has bashed Joker Phillips and even started a “#hiremikeleach” Twitter movement on their own website.

This is extremely disrespectful to Joker. Yes, the man has had a rough year thus far. Yes, things need to be fixed, but that does not excuse a fan website’s actions of trying to force him out despite the fact that he may not be performing up to par with expectations.

And what did the Mike Leach interview actually accomplish? Mitch Barhart just said that Phillips will “absolutely” be back next season as the head coach, so obviously the goal of getting Joker fired was not accomplished. Leach got to plug his book and that was about it. No breaking story, no coaching change and the “movement” that KSR tried to start fell flat on it’s face.

I will try and give them the benefit of the doubt. Matt Jones and company, like me, want to see the Cats succeed and right now it is painful to watch them lose. I am hoping that all they really want is to see Kentucky win and those good intentions got the best of them and they did something out of emotion instead of thinking it through.

Let’s try to understand something here: yes, we are just bloggers but there has to be some amount of integrity and loyalty in what we do. Unless there is a situation in which the head coach has publicly embarrassed the university or has exhibited behavior that is detrimental to the team, then no blogger, or media member or journalist should try to undercut that coach by interviewing an individual that they would like to see as a replacement.

Billy Gillespie was an example of a coach that had to go because of how he was treating the players and the media. He was also having trouble with alcohol, something that the head coach of the University cannot do in order to represent the team, the players and the Commonwealth. Joker Phillips has not committed any transgression even close to what Gillespie did. All Joker has done is lose football games in only his second year as a coach on a team that historically has lost in blow out fashion to teams like Florida, LSU and South Carolina.

In the end, if Phillips is not the right fit and Barnhart decides to go in another direction, then so be it. But do not count me in with a crowd that is actively trying to get him replaced while the man is still coaching and still has players around him that want to perform for him.

If Kentucky was sitting on a winning record or even a .500 record, would KSR had gone out of their way to interview Mike Leach? I don’t think so. I doubt Matt Jones and company even knew Leach had a book out, let alone really cared what he had to say about it. What Jones did was clearly a slap in the face to Joker Phillips and the football team.

KSR was clearly trying to start something, get Joker fired and if Leach was named the replacement, then take credit for getting Leach the job. This had nothing to do with the betterment of the football team, but everything to do with ego and notoriety.

I find it rather ridiculous that the KSR crew claim to be fans, yet they would throw one of their own under the bus in favor of a flavor of the week.

I wonder if they ever considered the possibility of Joker succeeding? After all, Rich Brooks was public enemy #1 until he finally got things straight and started winning football games. This was after a couple of seasons of bad, bad football. I wonder if KSR will publicly apologize to coach Phillips if he does succeed next year and beyond? Something tells me that will never happen.

Am I being too hard on Kentucky Sports Radio? It’s a possibility. But I cannot sit back as a fan of the Kentucky Wildcats and let another “fan” site over step their boundaries and try to ruin Joker Phillips. Last time I checked Mitch Barnhart was calling the shots in the hiring department, not Matt Jones.

KSR doesn’t speak for me and for all of Kentucky fans, just a small portion. As a fan,
I root for my team’s success and the success of the personnel in place, not for their demise for my own selfish reasons.

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