Jerry Tipton, Still Bringing the Hate

I only read the Lexington Herald-Leader on days when UK wins. To me, the LHL sports department is basically the equivalent of a message board for some school like U of L or IU where everyone hates Kentucky and thinks we're a bunch of crooks -- although, to be honest, even your typical rival message board treats UK more fairly than the LHL does.

Anyway, in case you were wondering whether long-time UK-hater Jerry Tipton -- a man who has devoted his career to writing about a program he despises -- has changed his tune since last year, I can assure you that he has not. Today, he decided to devote an entire column to trying to prove that Duke and UNC are both better basketball programs than UK. Now this is exactly the sort of thing I would expect to see on a rival message board. In fact, my guess is that the typical UK fan has read these exact arguments on rival message boards -- or even on one of UK's own message boards -- about 30 times in the last ten years. I know I have. Why anybody, anywhere would actually pay a grown man to write a column repeating those arguments in a newspaper read only by Kentucky fans is just inexplicable to me.

Also, it makes me wonder what, in Tipton's mind, is meant by the concept of a "beat reporter." I am always looking for the latest information about Kentucky's basketball program, and I have long since learned not to expect it from Tipton. In the last few years, Kentucky's basketball program has been through numerous coaching changes, has signed big recruits, has made news in countless ways. I do not remember any of these stories being broken by Jerry Tipton -- the beat reporter for UK in UK's hometown newspaper. But if you want the latest arguments from UNC fans about why their program is better than ours -- well he's all over that.