Comes now The Loathsome Troll Jeff Goodman with a blog post just dripping with disdain and schadenfreude.
According to Goodman, some of the oh-so-urbane coaches in the NABC have decided that Kentucky moving Big Blue Madness by utilizing the perfectly legal two hour/week rule is a huge problem. It seems these coaches were shocked -- shocked! and outraged that Gillispie would dare use those sacrosanct two-hour segments for anything as overtly commercial as Big Blue Madness. According to Goodman, they are so ticked off that they will petition the NCAA to forbid the practice.
A more self-righteous bunch of whining ninnies can scarcely be imagined. Ostensibly, they are claiming that the two hours per week allowed by the NCAA for practice time from September 15 until the official start of the season on October 17th was supposed to be for "skills development." Apparently, they believe such a high-minded ideal such as "skills development" between the aforementioned dates is so important to the players that skimming off two hours in order to beat others to the "midnight madness" punch is just plain wrong, and tsk, tsk, and might somehow damage the proper development of Gillispie's charges. Let me say that again -- according to Goodman, the NABC is saying the loss of these two hours for Big Blue Madness might damage player development! The scandal!
It isn't bad enough TLT Jeff Goodman's claim that the NABC went after Gillispie with their statement of "strong disapproval" of accepting verbal commitments from younger players was false, especially considering Gillispie was only one of many who were engaging in the practice, and the NABC explicitly denied any connection to a particular coach. He also didn't trouble to note that Gillispie, up until now, has not resumed the practice, even though Billy Donovan notoriously accepted a commitment from Austin Rivers after the NABC "strong disapproval" was made and Gillispie promised to abide by it. If we are to believe Goodman, the NABC is now going after Gillispie and dropping all pretenses about that fact.
Then, in yet another twist clearly (and successfully in my case, it seems) designed to annoy Kentucky fans, The Loathsome Troll Jeff Goodman goes on to mention a story that he wrote for Fox Sports on Tubby Smith's recruiting class. This part of his post has absolutely nothing particularly newsworthy in there except a few quotes from Royce White, a 5-star forward from Minnesota who committed to his home-state school praising Coach Smith.
TLT Jeff Goodman can't fail to know that Smith is the current NABC president -- so now he is suggesting, essentially, that Smith is presiding over an NABC assault on Billy Gillispie personally, and implying complicity by Smith in that act. Anyone who has ever read this blog knows that I am a big fan of Tubby Smith, and I am pleased as punch that he is doing well at UM. But what we have here is a deliberate attempt by TLTJG to rile up the Big Blue Nation and embarrass Billy Gillispie. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but this is the same guy who told me in an email that Tubby Smith essentially committed a crime in the case of the Immaculate Fax, for which I rebuked him sharply.
But Goodman's clear purpose was to use this little aside to tweak those Kentucky fans who don't like Smith and generate more chaos among the fans of the Blue and White. He probably hopes to provoke the more radical elements of the Big Blue Nation into condemning Smith for assailing Gillispie from his perch at the head of the NABC. That's patently absurd, but TLTJG is sure going out of his way to connect those dots for us.
It's hard to say who is being more peurile -- TLT Jeff Goodman or the NABC. I'm willing to call it a draw, but whoever the coaches are pitching a fit about this, they need to get over themselves. Even better, they can reveal themselves in the media so I can openly and unabashedly mock them all by name, and if Smith is one, he can prepare to be mocked as well.
As far as I am concerned, a lower form of life than TLTJG can scarcely be found anywhere without bars on the windows and doors.