THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

How tough can it be? How difficult is it being a college basketball coach? You do three things, basically. You recruit, you develop strategy, practice and you coach games. That’s it. You show up for a coach’s show once a week at a local bar or restaurant during the season, make nice with alums and donors, and you go home. That’s it. End of story.

So if it’s that simple, why couldn’t Billy Gillispie figure it out at Kentucky?
He doesn’t appear to be a dope. He won more than he lost. He recruited McDonalds All Americans, he developed strategy that worked more often than not. And he’s out of work.

I listened to that news conference Friday, the one the Kentucky athletic director and the school president presided over. If I’m not mistaken, the reasons they gave for Gillispie getting canned were that he was a social mutant who couldn’t sign his name. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t glad hand with the big dollar Kentucky donors and refused to sign his contract. Now I’ll admit, in this day and age, when someone is dangling the kind of money in front of you like Gillispie had dangled in front of him, you take it and run. If all it means is signing your name, you John Hancock it and call it a day. Six million to go away? Mine, take it, see you at the ranch. Gillispie apparently will get far less than six mil, simply because he didn’t sign his name.

Gillispie apparently mistreated some people in the media. Now we’re going to start worrying about the media? Do you know where the majority of people in this country place the media on the totem pole of respect? Just behind mass murderers and slightly ahead of politicians. Or lawyers. I interviewed Gillispie a couple of times. I found him to be cold and shifty He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He went 40-27 at UK. If he went 60-7, you know what? He could’ve stolen my wallet, he’d still be on the job. It’s all about winning. The rest of this stuff only surfaces when you don’t win enough games. 40-out of 67 at a place like Kentucky isn’t enough games.

Look, I’m not defending Gillispie. I could care less who coaches that team. Get paid the same if it’s Billy Gillispie coaching or Dizzy Gillispie. All I want to know is how tough can it be to coach Division One basketball. There are something like 360 ‘D-One’ teams, but only about 90 that count. If you’ve got a good big man, a guard who can distribute and a guard who can shoot, you’re going to win a lot of games in most conferences. You mean to tell me there aren’t 270-good to great basketball players in this country? If there aren’t you can’t fill in the blanks with players from Europe of China? Really?

90-teams, three good players, that’s 270-total. And a guy like Billy Gillispie coaching at UK can’t figure out how to make that happen?

And all of this talk about his lack of social skills. If you’re the head basketball coach at Kentucky, ,why wouldn’t you want to parlay that into free dinner and golf? All you have to do is tell a couple of stories, they don’t even have to be true, sign a few autographs pose for a few pictures and go home. It’s not tough. It’s not assembly line, fast food cook, door to door salesman tough.

It’s amazing that Mitch Barnhart, the Kentucky athletic director, couldn’t figure out that Gillispie had none of these skills long before he tried to hire him. Does Barnhart not have friends or informants he can trust? If it’s not that tough to be a basketball coach, how much tougher is it to be an athletic director?

This is the University Of Kentucky basketball. You got to get it right. But trust me, when you’re that big, with that much tradition, it’s not that hard to find the right guy. And it’s not that hard for the right guy to succeed. Billy Gillispie blew it. But he had an accomplice. Mitch Barnhart blew it too. And so did the UK school president. He should have fired Barnhart on Friday, too.

Two things you need to know about my sports coverage tonight on WLWT Channel 5. We'll be in the Bengals locker room today to get the latest from the team, which re-gathers for the start of voluntary workouts. And we'll check in with the Miami RedHawks hockey team, just back from qualifying for the Frozen Four.

Later today on my web site: www.kenbroo.com, I'm posting an interview I did Sunday morning on 700 WLW with mlb.com's Jonathan Mayo about the status of the Cincinnati Reds, one week from the start of the season. And Tuesday midday, look for the latest Broo View Podcast on www.kenbroo.com. My guest, NFL player-agent, Jack Bechta. Among other things, he has the inside story as to why the Bengals let all purpose offensive lineman, Eric Steinbach leave for Cleveland a couple of springs ago.

Good Luck! Get through it. The toughest part of the week is Monday. I'll see you tonight at p and 11p on WLWT Channel 5.