Kentucky Wildcats Afternoon Quickies: Tiger Woods Edition

Tiger Woods, fresh off his 17th straight major championship without a win, has gone completely insane and is lapping the field at Firestone country club.

Tweet of the Morning:

Before you pray: BELIEVE Before you speak: LISTEN Before you spend: EARN Before you write: THINK Before you quit: TRY Before you die: LIVE

— Michael Jordan (@itsMichaelJ) August 3, 2013

Good advice.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• The talking is over for Mark Stoops. Now comes the time to deliver.
• Yet another look at Kentucky's prospects for this year.
• Cat Scratches describes Mark Stoops' staff as "diverse" and "single-minded." Those sound like good things.
• Drew Barker receives his official offer from UK.
• Mark Stoops' phone number is now public. Of course, a Louisville fan claims to have called him. I wouldn't be surprised.

Kentucky basketball

• Jerry Meyer's Crystal Ball sees another banner recruiting year for Kentucky in 2014.
• UK recruits will be on display Monday night on ESPNU. NextCats has the list, and the details.

• Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones favor Duke, according to Okafor's AAU coach. Remember when Patrick Patterson and Jai Lucas were talking this same stuff. How did that work out, again?

  Look, there are always "package deal" recruiting talk, but very few actually materialize. Usually, the ones that do are a case of twins. It does happen, but usually, the package splits up and goes their separate ways.

Links posts

• The Leach Report — Saturday Wildcat Links
• John Clay's Big Blue Links
• John Clay's SEC Links

College football

• Adam Himmelsbach of the Courier-Journal observes the hypocrisy in Charlie Strong's decision to accept Michael Dyer.

  I'm going to posit his situational abandonment of his "core values" is driven by Mark Stoops' success on the recruiting trail. Strong knows that he can't afford to lose recruiting classes to Stoops, and I also think he's a little alarmed at the lack of a boost from last year's Orange Bowl victory on the recruiting trail.

• Sportsrageous says that Michael Dyer makes Louisville a contender for a Mythical National Championship. I don't agree, but it does help the Cardinals to some degree. Dyer is good, but he's not Barry Sanders.

• What if Johnny Football was a Longhorn?
• Kentucky's Bear Bryant debacle gets beaten out by Arkansas' 2012 season as the worst SEC disaster by 25 votes, or roughly 2 percent.

• College and Magnolia on the transfer of Michael Dyer to Louisville:

  Should Auburn fans care whether or not Dyer keeps his life on track at Louisville? Not really, no. The last time he made headlines on the Plains, it was for testifying at Antonio Goodwin's armed robbery trial, saying he smoked synthetic weed with his teammates and that it was his gun used during the crime. It's understandable that fans in orange and blue have washed their hands of the situation.

• Land Grant Holy Land writes that Ohio St. players should be very well behaved, because the scholarship crunch gives Meyer a motive to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to misbehavior, especially since he's been recently accused of allowing discipline to be very lax.

College basketball

• An ACC Network? Go for it, guys, but I think the obstacles are too great.
• Big Ten Powerhouse examines the shooting guard position in the Big Ten, and asks, "Who's the best shooting guard in the Big Ten?"

Other sports news

• Parker Executive Search has become the go-to place for head coaches to find work. Dana O'Neil looks at headhunting companies in general and Parker in particular. They don't come cheap, either, charging as much as $90,000. But I found this part very interesting, but not surprising:

  Usually a school's search committee has a wish list of candidates, and it reviews those names first.

  "Very often, they'll stop right here," said Wilder, as Plunkett accesses the financial information page of one coach. "They'll realize a candidate is already making too much money or the buyout clause is bigger than they're interested in. People love to say it's not about the money. It's very often about the money."

  It usually is, I'd say.

• Jacob Tamme in danger of being cut by Denver? Let's hope not.

• Terrence Jones apologizes for his actions in Portland. As I explained in my post to those who think we should be "standing up" for Terrence, there is no reason to do so. Terrence did a wrong thing whether or not he's guilty of the misdemeanor he is accused of, and this is proof that he knows he did a wrong thing.
• Tiger Woods is en fuego at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
• The 20 NBA players with the deepest shooting range of all time.