Leave it to C.M. "beachhouse" Newton to submarine the new UK coach before he's coached a practice. The former Kentucky athletic director -- and hirer of Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith, as well as the venerable Hal Mumme -- was dug out of golden retirement to give his thoughts on the hiring of new hoops coach Billy Gillispie.
Newton, whose exile from UK athletics stems as much from his pocketing millions from the athletic department budget as from actually retiring, started off innocuously enough.
But it wasn't long after that when the good ole boy opened his trap and he showed he should be returned to the Cheney-like seclusion where he was.
Thanks for the input, C.M. God forbid you'd just accept that your days of mattering are past you and offer a simple, "Looks great!" Don't get me wrong, the guy has long, Blue ties, and he's entitled to his opinion. But he has to know (or should know) that his opinions matter more than Joe Bob from Bardstown, and that to suggest that "this guy" wasn't, or shouldn't have been, high on the list, is very ill-timed.
I'll grant you that he has a point about understanding the pressures of the job -- heck, I posted the same thing about John Pelphrey just a day before the Clyde hiring -- but there's a time for that, and the day after the dude takes the job, when he's out there recruiting to patch up the mess the guy you hired -- who skipped town, no less -- left behind, is pretty lame in my opinion. I'm sure someone will stick up for C.M. I mean, he's the good ole boys' good ole boy.
Now someone put ole Newton out to pasture before he starts talking about his model-T.