Topics Important To Me

• Kentucky Football
• Global Warming
• President Obama's Policies

The University of Kentucky is a University that has a deep athletic history in not only basketball (7 national championships) but also, to the surprise of some, football as well (1 national championship). Currently the University of Kentucky football team is going through a rather hard time to say it nicely. This team is one who has won 2 two games against small schools who we were expected to beat and would have been almost impossible to lose to. We then went on to loose three straight games against two teams we honestly had no chance of beating (Florida and LSU), but the other lose was at the hands of Louisville. The Louisville game was one, that at some points in the game, Kentucky looked lost on what to do and overall just seemed to get man handled. Kentucky did have a chance to win the game at the end, but for the most part Louisville had control of the game throughout.

As a result of our poor football team many people have started to order the firing of our head football coach Joker Phillips, or they have just have forgotten about football all together and focused their attention on the Kentucky Basketball team who in many peoples opinion including mine will win the national championship this year. Of these two situations I see the latter as absurd. To turn your back on the football team is something that I view as a Kentucky fan is something that is just idiotic. Kentucky is not just a basketball school and I think that many of our fans do not understand this. Kentucky in 2007 was ranked 8th in the nation in football and won the national championship in 1950 which is something that to my amazement is something that many Kentucky "fans" do not know.

In defense of the people who have given up on the football program. We are indeed awful. The team is one that goes into games looking like they do not understand the fundamentals of football whatsoever. Our defensive players find it effective to just launch themselves at opposing players in hope that the player falls down rather then wrap them up and tackle them like even I was taught while playing in the 5TH GRADE. The team is also one that has wide receivers who, if you do not know anything about football, have the job of simply getting the ball thrown to them by the quarterback and once the ball gets to them their only job is to catch it. Our wide receivers are expects at letting the ball go right through their hands, or just deciding to drop the ball when it seems almost impossible not to catch it. As if this was not bad enough these clueless players are led by a football coach that also seems like he doesn't know what he is doing. Joker Phillips was hired mainly because he was known for being able to call the offensive plays which is something that Mitch Barnhart Kentucky's Athletic Director liked. To the demise of the team Phillips is an atrocious play caller. In last weeks game I was able to sit in the stands with fellow Kentucky football fan, who shares the same views as me as seen in his blog post, and literally be able to predict which play we would run and when we would run it. To put it simply Kentucky almost every time they have the ball runs it then passes it then runs it and the punts it to the other team. If myself as a fan who knows a little about football but not nearly as much as an opposing coach is able to predict the plays we are going to run then the teams we are playing against do not likely have a very hard time predicting that either. And this is evident in the amount of times teams have forced us to punt this year, 34. We give the ball to other team so much by being forced to punt that our punter Ryan Tydlacka is according to some the best player on our team. The fact that the person that does their job the best for Kentucky football is the punter shows how truly horrible the football program currently is.

Due to our history in football and because we are a member of the best league when it comes to football, the SEC, the thing that will ultimately save our football program will be to fire Joker Phillips. Phillips is a man who has spent pretty much his entire life around the football program and was named as coach in waiting in 2008 under then current head coach Rich Brooks. This in my opinion was what caused the current downfall of our football team. What our program needed after coming off a season in which: we went to and won three straight bowl games, upset the number one team in the nation, hosted college game day, and were ranked 8th in the nation was that after Rick Brooks retired we needed a large national coaching search. What coach wouldn't want to come to a up and coming SEC football team? The answer to that question is not many. If the University would of made that decision we would of more then likely ended up with a high profile coach that would of brought a lot of popularity to this football program.

What I am hoping for as a fan of Kentucky football is that the team this year has an awful season. The reason that I actually hope this happens is because one it is likely to happen anyways and if we do have a horrible season it will increase the chances that Joker Phillips does get fired if not this season then next season and the football team will finally get what it needs and that is a national coaching search. We may not get the type of coach that we would of gotten in 2008 but we are still an SEC football school and as a result there will be many coaches that would give their left arm to coach at this University. That is all. Go cats.