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Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Brady Hoke Edition

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By Glenn Logan

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Michigan starting quarterback Shane Morris was injured on Saturday by a helmet-to-helmet hit in which he apparently received a slight concussion, but coach Brady Hoke sent him back in later in the game anyway. Hoke said he was unaware of any concussion. Last night, at 1AM, apparently, Michigan AD Dave Brandon released a statement on the Morris injury and the events in question.

Maize n Brew, SB Nation’s Michigan blog, was … displeased, to say the least. Brady Hoke was already on the hot seat, and this incident may well be the end of his tenure whether or not his actions were defensible. I’m reserving judgment on that for now.

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Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

  • Darian Miller is the SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week. Congratulations, but it looks to me as if the O-line performance on Saturday was anything but spectacular.

  • Mark Stoops talks about South Carolina:

  • GoGamecocks scouts Kentucky. Consider:

    The last time Kentucky beat an SEC East team from outside the state of Tennessee was in 2010. That’s when the Wildcats beat USC 31-28.

    I think this would be a fine time to end that four-year drought.

  • Mark Stoops doesn’t take the Ol’ Ball Coach’s zingers seriously:

    UK’s Mark Stoops seemed unfazed by past or present comments directed at his team by the old ball coach.

    "He’s just having fun; he’s like that," Stoops said of the South Carolina coach, who is good friends with Stoops’ brother Bob.

    The Stoops family vacations near the Spurrier family in the summers, too.

    "Some of the things he says (are) true, and some people don’t like hearing the truth," Stoops continued. "He’s a very honest guy, and as a coach, you respect that. He calls it the way it is."

    Spurrier is gonna be Spurrier. The best response is to send him home with an L.

  • The Pittsburgh Tribune takes note of Stoops’ progress with the football team.

  • Glenn Osborne at Kentucky Forward writes that the final play of the first half on Saturday was the kind of play that can turn a season. It certainly was critical to get that TD, and who knows what happens if Vandy gets the stop there.

  • Matt Elam talks about life on campus, Big Blue Madness, more.

  • Be sure to read Greenwell’s latest on the packaged play. Here’s a taste:

    Unlike option plays, these type of packaged plays are made pre-snap. The decision is made by the alignment of a defender or number of defenders in the box. The decision is made pre-snap because lineman will be run blocking. If the play is allowed to develop too long, the quarterback risks having lineman downfield on a forward pass. An advantage of this type of packaged play is all players execute their assignment at 100% effort because no one knows if he is running or catching the ball. Offensive linemen are given a three yard cushion in college football.

    Read the whole thing.

  • Larry Vaught is talking redshirt for Jeff Badet and Alexander Montgomery. That might not be a bad thing.

Kentucky basketball
Other Kentucky sports
College football

  • Land Grant Holy Land writes about controversy surrounding the Cincinnati-Ohio State game this past weekend.

  • Brandon Larrabee at Team Speed Kills thinks Michigan should fire Brady Hoke immediately. I’m not into snap judgments, and this looks like one to me. If Hoke wasn’t aware of the injury (what that says about his competence is certainly open to question), then it’s hard to see why he should be fired for an action that unknowingly put a player at risk.

    I think a bigger question is, why didn’t he know? Morris’ stumble after the hit was apparently seen by many, but it’s certainly possible Hoke was not one of them. So that makes me wonder why somebody didn’t tell him that Morris was showing signs of a concussion.

    I have learned to apply Hanlon’s Razor to most of these circumstances. If Hoke was made aware of the injury, someone will no doubt come forward and confirm he was, or should. If he wasn’t, people like Brandon are holding him to what would be described as strict liability in the legal sense.

    I don’t think that’s a justifiable standard in this instance. Morris himself surely had to know, or at least suspect, that he was hurt, and he apparently didn’t tell Hoke. You can’t remove his responsibility to protect himself from the equation.

    Having said that, further investigation of the matter is surely called for. Reckless stupidity is certainly a good reason to fire someone, but simple ignorance of a fact is not, unless it is somehow culpable. But the totality of the circumstances surrounding Hoke at this moment may justify getting rid of him anyway.

College basketball
Other sports news

  • Is the Bill Simmons suspension by ESPN signs of a feud between the Worldwide Leader and its most visible talent? The Big Lead thinks so:

    The old guard has its fingers crossed they can pester and annoy Simmons to the point that he pulls the trigger on a plan they claim he’s been mulling after spending so much time in Hollywood: decamp from ESPN to a venture capital-backed solo operation with contributions from his West Coast buddies Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla.

    But what if Simmons decides to try to flip the script and force the network to continue to deal with him for opinions that are anything but unpopular, like his takedown of Roger Goodell? Will Barad Dur Bristol dare fire him?

  • Ex-Wildcats notes. A couple of nuggets in here, but I can just see it now — Krzyzewski getting credit for DeMarcus Cousins’ "improvement." Maybe Woj was right.

Other news

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