Kentucky Wildcats Sunday Quickies: Tonalist Edition

Well, California Chrome was the latest victim of the Belmont, and failed to achieve the Triple Crown yesterday in New York. The Race was a very good one, but California Chrome simply didn't run a particularly good race for whatever reason.

After the affair, Chrome's owner Steve Coburn went on a silly rant that has no basis in fact or history, and his contention that only horses who have run in the Kentucky Derby should be eligible for the other Triple Crown races flies not only in the face of history, but unfairly impugns his fine horse, who was definitely good enough to win. It just wasn't his day.

Regarding Coburns rant, Gregg Doyel gets it mostly right:

All three horses who won the most recent Triple Crowns -- all in the 1970s -- faced fields brimming with fresh horses like the field California Chrome faced Saturday at the Belmont. In the 1978 Belmont, Affirmed had to beat only one horse (Alydar) that had joined it in the first two Triple Crown races. In the 1977 Belmont, exactly half the field that Seattle Slew beat had also raced in the Derby and the Preakness; three of the eight horses in the field were one-and-done Triple Crown entries into the 1977 Belmont, as Tonalist was Saturday. And in 1973, only one other horse (Sham) joined Secretariat in racing all three Triple Crown events.

So this has been going on for 40 years. At least. And here's another fact, in another direction: The near-miss Triple Crown candidates since Affirmed in 1978? They were taken down, by and large, by fields that mirrored the field that took down California Chrome.

Just so. So if you were taken in by Coburn's epic rant (I, of course, having followed horse racing since the early 1970's was not), just walk away. This is the way of things, and a good reason why the Triple Crown is such a momentous feat.

In honor of the possibility, I watched not only the official re-running of Secretariat's historic and unassailable Belmont run in 1973, I also watched the outstanding movie Secretariat starring Diane Lane Friday night, which despite it's omissions and contrivances, is very faithful to the story of the great horse. It was a fitting nod to history before it was made again. Alas, it was not to be.

Tweet of the Morning

California Chrome owner is bitter and says "It's not fair to these horses." The horses say "This is the least of our problems"

— Albert Brooks (@AlbertBrooks) June 7, 2014

That's right — the horses don't care. They don't know what the odds are, they don't care how many others are in the race, they don't know the Triple Crown from a nosebag, and they definitely don't care what, if any, the other runners raced in. Fairness is as alien a concept to a horse as speaking English. My apologies to Mr. Ed.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Son of Craig Yeast gets Kentucky offer. Sounds like a good idea to me.

• Kentucky has plenty of competition for target Darius Fullwood.

• Damien Harris cuts list, Kentucky still there.

• Kyle Meadows hated his redshirt year, but it made him a better player. That's what they're for, Kyle.

• James Quick (U of L) and Jason Hatcher (UK) arrested cited for marijuana possession.

Kentucky basketball

• Wildcats in the NBA embrace analytics to gain an edge.

• James Pennington writes for SB Nation that John Calipari is worth it for Kentucky. Yes, he really is.

Other Kentucky sports

• Max Khun and Chandler Shepherd taken in the MLB draft, along with three others. JLeverenz has all the details, plus more on some incoming Wildcats who were drafted.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Sunday Wildcat Links

College football

• Updated college football playoff odds.

• Mike Bianchi, in my view one of the all-time douchenozzles in the sports commentariat, says the SEC should drop the two Mississippi schools in favor of USF and UCF. No, Mike, they should not. Now do us all a favor and destroy your computer, quit your job, and become a Wal-Mart greeter.

College basketball

• Former Wildcat Scott Padgett named head coach at Samford. Congratulations!

• Roy Williams responds to Rashad McCants' allegations of knowing academic fraud at North Carolina:

  Williams adamantly denied Saturday that he ever discussed swapping any classes with McCants; further, he said he did not recall such a meeting "at all."

  "I don't have any idea what swapping out would be," Williams said. "That's not in my vocabulary. You can't take a course and get another one thrown out at the college level. All of your courses count. So I know I would not have that kind of conversation. I don't know what swapping out means, and I have never suggested that anybody take any course."

  However, others are skeptical:

  Mary Willingham, a former UNC learning specialist who often is described as a whistleblower about the UNC academic fraud scandal, told "Outside the Lines" she believes McCants' allegations.

  "What he is saying absolutely lines up with what I have found: tutors writing papers for players, and advisers and tutors steering players to AFAM," she said. "I think the coaches knew about the paper-class system. Of course they did."

  More here.

• Oklahoma releases a tough non-conference schedule. Not bad.

• Steve Masiello officially reinstated by the Manhattan Jaspers. Hat tip: Aaron's blog.

• Bruce Pearl making a splash at Auburn. Speaking of Loose Bruce, here's his contract details.

• SEC class of 2014 breakdown.

Other sports news

• Chrome's angry owner makes a good point? No, he really doesn't. Consider:

  And when racing people get over their purse-lipped disapproval of Coburn’s outburst, they’ll see he has a good point. Coburn’s point-blankness will be called classless or crude by some, but the fact is, he’s right. California Chrome wasn’t running on equal terms with so many lightly raced competitors. “It’s all or nothing,” Coburn said. “It’s not fair to these horses that are running their guts out.” In the last 12 years, only a single horse has won the Belmont after competing in both the Derby and the Preakness. The final race of the series tends to be won by mystery horses with fresher legs that can plow through the deep loam of the huge tree studded park, and that was Tonalist.

  Yes. So how is this a good point? It has been this way since the early 20th century. We should change it now because... Oh wait, that's right — there is no good reason.

  Add a week, between races, if you must try to increase the chances of a winner. Other than that, leave it alone. Here's a more reasoned view.

• McCants has Roy Williams on the hot seat. My question is, will anybody that matters care, i.e. the North Carolina administration or the NCAA? Hat tip: Real Clear Sports

• Rafael Nadal defeats Novak Djokavich for the French Open title, his ninth.

• O'Bannon lawsuit finally set to begin.

Other news

• Clever kitchen scale takes the guesswork out of cooking. Where's the fun in that?

• Five most incredible discoveries of the week.

• Microsoft to fix flaws in Windows 8, but leave them in Windows 7. With the vast improvement and availability of on-line office software, just dump your Microsoft installation in favor of a friendly Linux distro like Mint or Ubuntu. Much more secure, much safer, and unless you are a committed gamer, much better.

  By the bye, WINE for Linux now runs a bunch of Windows programs well, like Evernote, among others. So if you don't want to deal with the expense of a Mac, consider a free, and potentially much faster OS in a Linux distribution. I've been running it since the mid-1990's, before it was dead simple to install and use.