Links: UK submits Olivier Sarr’s waiver request; PFF love for Drake Jackson
Some Monday notes and links:
▪ Dick Vitale says he was told by John Calipari that UK has submitted its application for Olivier Sarr to receive a transfer waiver after arriving from Wake Forest.
▪ In his UK basketball notebook, Jerry Tipton talked to Kenny “Sky” Walker about his brother, Lewis, who has been sheriff of Crawford County, Ga., since 2009. “I love him to death,” Walker said. “But with all this stuff going on in the world, I worry about him.”
▪ Mark Story talked with Kentuckian and NBC Sports’ Kenny Rice, who has one big worry about covering the rescheduled Belmont Stakes this Saturday. “This might be the only event I ever cover where I am going to have a PPE package sent to me this week by NBC,” Rice said Thursday.
▪ In our Kentucky time machine series, we re-ran Jerry Tipton’s game story from Kentucky’s 20-19 win over Wisconsin in the 1984 Hall of Fame Bowl. “Joe Worley kicked a record-tying and game-winning 52-yard field goal that gave Kentucky a 20-19 victory over Wisconsin in last night’s Hall of Fame Bowl here.”
▪ Pro Football Focus says UK center Drake Jackson has allowed just one sack in 974 pass-block snaps during his college career. Jackson returns as the senior anchor to the Wildcats’ 2020 offensive line.
▪ My Sunday column concerned the fact that despite our economic re-opening, the coronavirus pandemic is not over. And that will have an effect on an on-time start to the college football season. “As we try to reopen the economy, 19 states have reported rises in coronavirus cases. Arkansas reported 731 new cases on Friday, the largest number since the pandemic began.”
▪ Cecil Hurt of the Tuscaloosa News also wrote about the COVID-19 tea leaves. “There will still be college football, almost certainly. The mighty engine of commerce will see to that and perhaps, with a little less than three months to go, venues can be made safe enough. Will everything be back exactly like it was, restored to a pre-coronavirus status in three months? That doesn’t seem likely to me.”
▪ Gentry Estes of the Tennessean also writes about how football will look in the time of a global pandemic. “For a college football coach, a meticulously organized world has been replaced by foreign, uncomfortable uncertainty. So many questions without answers.”
▪ Nine Ole Miss athletes are in quarantine after close contact with a COVID-19 case. And four more Mississippi State football players have tested positive for COVID-19.
▪ Former Murray State basketball star Ja Morant, now of the Memphis Grizzlies, asked a judge to have a Confederate monument removed in downtown Murray. “As a young Black man, I cannot stress enough how disturbing and oppressive it is to know the city still honors a Confederate war general defending white supremacy and hatred.”
▪ Clemson players, led by quarterback Trevor Lawrence, led a Black Lives Matter march over the weekend. Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney was also on hand for the 2-mile march. “This is beyond what I could have imagined,” an emotional running back Darien Rencher said.
▪ College football coaches better adapt to emboldened players with new forms of power, writes Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel.
▪ Scott Rabbles of The Advocate in Baton Rouge thinks LSU should make a move to honor trailblazers. “More importantly, LSU should find a way to commemorate its barrier-breaking former athletes: Collis Temple Jr., the school’s first black men’s basketball player, and Lora Hinton, its first black football player.”
▪ Pat Dooley of the Gainesville Sun asks if the golden age of SEC quarterbacks can continue. LSU’s Joe Burrow and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa are both off to the NFL. Florida’s Kyle Trask may take over the top spot among conference passers.
▪ Saturday Down South has a question-and-answer with SEC Network football analyst Cole Cubelic. “I look up to Greg McElroy, I look up to Dan Orlovsky. I think Joel Klatt is amazing calling a game. The list is endless, really. There are a ton of people who have helped me along the way. … Booger McFarland has become a guy I’ve really leaned on the past few years and has become a great friend of mine. I had Laura Rutledge on my show when she was covering recruiting when she was a student at Florida.”
▪ Front Office Sports has a Q&A with the SEC Network’s one and only Paul Finebaum. “The last three months of talking with sports fans daily about COVID-19 and the shattered sports calendar — and more recently discussing the impact of George Floyd’s tragic death — have been the most important and meaningful of my career. I love working at ESPN and have no interest in doing anything else.”
▪ Three Auburn gymnasts wrote about their experiences with racism, prompting an apology from Coach Jeff Garba. “When we told our teammates their use of the n-word so freely in person and on social media was unacceptable, it went in one ear and out the other; they didn’t stop. Our feelings didn’t matter.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 7:18 AM.
