Welcome to the Big Blue Insider. Dick Averwell with you Tuesday edition of our program. Tonight, of course, we will talk a lot of Kentucky football wild Cats picking up the pieces after an embarrassing loss to South Carolina. Frankly, a game that Kentucky was favored to win. I don't put any stock in the points spread. In fact, I thought the points spread was way too big. I thought it would be a close game, but it went off
at nine and a half. I think after opening at like ten or ten and a half, I didn't think Kentucky would swamp South Carolina. I thought the game Cocks would be better after they almost lost that opener, but I didn't think I would see what I saw. So we'll talk about that tonight with Jeff Bicorol. We're also gonna air from Tim Couch, the Hall of famer who's being inducted this weekend into the College Football Hall of Fame.
He was on for a couple minutes last night with Mark Soups, so we have a chance to chat with him a little while longer tonight. Also coming up, myle buddy John Wynn Miller, who went to UK with me, worked on the Kentucky colonel, we will tell some old stories about UK basketball back in the day compared to now. John also, though is an accomplished author after a long career and a good one in journalism, wrote a tremendous book and now has a couple of sequels on the way.
So shameless plugs for John Wynn's book, but will tell some stories about what basketball was like back in the day at UK because his dad was Adolph Ruff's lawyer, so John and his siblings literally grew up with Ruff's runts. But we start a course on campus at UK with Kentucky soccer because last night the men lost to Louisville, second consecutive home pitch loss for the UK men, but they did draw crowd and I mentioned this going on the air the other night about how great the atmosphere
is at the Bell. They had more than fourteen hundred people show up and go crazy over there, so they had a lot of fun and did not see what they wanted to see as the Wildcats dropped a one to two and one on the men's side. Women had two straight shutouts this past week and goalkeeper Mars Josephson, a grad student, has been named the SEC Defensive Player of the Week, a grad transfer from North Carolina. A second time Kentucky has won the Defensive Player of the
Week award. After wins over Murray State and that upset win over UCLA on Sunday, the Bruins ranked ninth. A lot of chatter, of course, about Tom Brady and his performance as a rookie broadcaster. A buddy of mine texted me and said, it was mashed potatoes on white bread. Yeah it was, but look, it was his first game, and there's a little bit of a controversy if you want to call it that that. You know, some people
try to make it controversy. But Scott Hansen, the guy who so capably anchors the red zone, he was kind of teasing Brady a little bit. I don't know if you saw the game, but the Cowboys Browns game, right beforetime, they tried a sixty six yard field goal that the Cowboys would have made it, but there was a flag on the play, so they were about to try a seventy one yarder and Brady just kind of worked his
way through it. Scott Hansen, though, basically poked a little fun at Brady and said he's got to get more excited than that, and suddenly there was this apology by Scott Hansen on Twitter. He said it was unfair and inconsiderate. I was saying a tongue in cheek, but it didn't calculate it how it may come across. I apologize. I promise I'm rooting you on in this new venture. I guarantee if somebody said, hey man, you need to apologize
somebody upstairs because it wasn't that bad. And Brady, to his credit, came back and tweeted this rookie appreciates you, Scott Hanson. No apology necessary, my man, life is too short to not have fun or officially on seventy yarder watch and I'm gonna spike my headset when it happens. I appreciate somebody looking out for Tom Brady. Remember this was the guy who played in Boston and not every year was a super Bowl year, so he knows how
to take it. And as I said, if you go back and listen to Scott Hanson, it wasn't that big a deal what he said. But I'm thinking somebody up the network chain said something to Scott Hanson. Across the country, people who talked about and wrote about Brady pretty much all said the same thing, and it all had up to mah, you know. And we talked about it on the Statewide Show last night as Billy Rutlans brought up the price tag total of about three hundred and seventy
five million dollars. But it's his first game, and I will promise you this, There isn't anybody in my line of work, TV or radio who would want to go back and watch or listen to their first effort on air and present it as what they are capable of doing now after a long career. And chief among them is my man Tom Leechs, who every once in a while will pull out a clip. It's not even his first performance on a Paris radio station when he was sixteen, but he plays it on the air and just kind
of laughs about it. And if I could find my first efforts, I would too, because I was terrible. Most of us were very few of us hit the ground like Tony Romo did and take off running. I heard him described as the Unicorn, and he really was because he just has that outgoing personality and he started in with the play calling and everything, and you know, I promise you. I know for a fact because I read some account of Fox's game prep with Tom Brady. They did.
He and Burkhart did multiple practice games. But it's not the same. There's not the same energy, there's not the same adrenaline. So he'll get better. Is he going to be better than Greg Olsen? I don't know. Is he gonna be worth three hundred and seventy five million. I don't know that either. I will not tune in just to watch him. Maybe some people will. That's not a knock on him. I watch the games I want to watch. I don't care who's calling the game. If he's annoying me,
I will turn it off. College football numbers NBC Sports is turning back handsprings because of the Nebraska Colorado game. NBC said an average of six point three million viewers watched the Husker twenty eight to ten win over Coach Prime, most watched Big Ten Saturday night game since the series debuted last year. So obviously happy about that. Nebraska's second broadcast on NBC in prime time. They were featured last season against Wisconsin two point four to five million, so
that's quite the jump. Before we hit the break, and hear from Mark Stoops. He had his news conference yesterday and of course spoke on the radio last night. We need to acknowledge the passing of the great James Earl Jones, and yeah, there's a baseball link here and you know what it is, Field of Dreams. But of course he is the voice of Darth Vader and always will be. But what's interesting about that is he was not the
physical embodiment of Darth Vader. The role was actually played on camera within the costume by a British actor by the name of David Charles Prausse. And he was a member of the MB which is it's not exactly the same as being knighted, but it's in that class. There are five classes of appointment of the Order, and the top rank, if you will, is Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross. Number five is member of the Most
Excellent Order of the British Empire MB. So when you see his name, and he since passed in print anywhere, it's officially David Charles Prowse MBE. And he was an actor and a fine actor, a bodybuilder and a strong man, and they needed somebody big in that costume. But they needed a different voice, and it's not that he has a bad voice. But here are a couple of clips from the movie where you hear his lines. Then you hear the same lines dubbed in by James Earl Jones, and I should.
Started tearing the ship of peas people too.
You finding those tastes tiny, the passages.
In a sess, I want them alive.
Come on, not tear that ship of pot So you found those lines.
And make me the passengers.
I want them alive.
I'm a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic You are part.
Of the Ripper Ali, I'm a trait.
Take her away.
On you are pod of a rebel of lions, and take it away.
I had read his name Prouds, but it never heard him speak. But that raw footage right there tells you what it sounded like on set. And then, of course when they laid in James Earl Jones, who had never met Carrie Fisher until they both appeared on the Big
Bang Theory, one of my all time favorite shows. The lead character Sheldon Cooper goes to James Earl Jones to ask him to come to build a comic cond event with him, and instead they go out that night and have all kinds of fun and pull kinds of pranks, and one of them was to ring her doorbell, Carrie Fisher's doorbell and run away. Here they are getting ready to ring the bell.
Gary Fisher, and she's a little crazy, so he'll get ready to run.
And then Fisher opens the door and comes out with a baseball bat, and she yells her only line, it's not funny anymore, James, why.
Am i alve.
And as I said, they had never met until the filming of that show, because she was, of course on the set with Star he was in a sound booth doing all his lines, and so they finally got a chance to meet. And one of the producers said, when they finally did, Carrie Fisher put her arms out and yelled dad. Because, of course, in the movie, Darth Vader is the father of not just Luke Luke, I am your father, but obviously also Princess Leia Luke's sisters, So
you're gonna miss James. Earl Jonesy popped up on The Simpsons and Sesame Street doing the alphabet and of course the great speech from Field of Dreams.
The one constant through all the years Ray has been Baseball America is ruled by like an army of steam rulers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball doesn't marked the time. This field, this game, it's a part of our past. Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good.
The cookie again.
Oh, people will come, Ray, People will most definitely come. Ray.
You will lose everything, You will be evicted.
And that's when Costner, listening to his brother in law, does not sign and get rid of the farm. He looks out and sees his dad in the outfield because I'm not going to sign the papers, and they keep
and you know the rest, everything is a success. But you know, the one thing that we all did for years, we made the mistake of saying, when we refer to that scene, if you build it, they will come, Because we think about at the end of the movie, all the locals pouring in to pay five bucks to see this field carved out of a cornfield, which of course saves the family farm. But that's not what the voice said. The voice said, if you build that, he will come.
The voice was talking about Kevin Costner's character Ray Ray Cancella his father and of course at the end chokes me up every time he has a catch with his dad. So James Earl Jones so vital in that movie playing the author Terrence Man, Ray goes all the way to Boston to kidnap him and bring him to Iowa. Just a fantastic film, one of the all time great baseball movies. And because of that movie, now they play a game each year on that field out there among the years
of corn. Up next, Mark Stoops and a little bit later on Jeff mccaorrel plus the Hall of Famer Tim Couch Hearing the Big Moonsider six thirty wlap. Welcome back to the Big moon Sider, Dick Gabriel with you coming up Saturday. Of course it is Kentucky and Georgia seven thirty kickoff. You're hear it right here starting at five thirty on six thirty wlap for the record, playing hurt today. That's right, walking the dog this morning, as I do every morning and every afternoon. Stung by a bee on
my left ring finger. I mean that was the I had the leash in that hand and suddenly I'm feeling something sharp and hot and painful. I look down, there's a small but effective bee stinging the crap out of me right above my wedding ring. So yeah, playing hurt, we're sucking it up. Speaking of playing hurt, there may be some Wildcats playing hurt, if not physically mentally against Georgia this weekend because of what happened against South Carolina.
And you've maybe heard and read comments from Mark Stoops if not, I'm here for you. Of course what came out of the news conference yesterday, and he reiterated it on his radio show, but it kind of surprised me early. I mean it was in his opening remarks after he congratulated Tim Couch, who was coming up at the bottom of the hour, he talked about the fact that I was not, of course, in the media scrum afterwards. We were upstairs and had Mark on the postgame radio show.
He did not say to Tom Leach at least I don't recall wondering or asserting his team didn't play very hard, but evidently he did in the media because he walked that back on Monday afternoon.
You know, much of what I said after the game holds true with one exception, and it's a good thing after watching the film, I actually do think our guys played really hard.
We just didn't play very smart.
I said that, you know, in the post game as well, and it holds true. We didn't play very we didn't execute very good, and we didn't play very disciplined. We didn't play very we didn't play winning football at all. We played hard at times, guys were physically up for the challenge, just mentally we got to do a better job.
And you know, you have to put a.
Lot of that and give credit to South Carolina for that as well.
They affected us.
They played very good, They played better than us, and that's the bottom line.
So yeah, they played hard, but at times they played dumb, and that was for everybody to see. The defense breaking down in the secondary, the offense falling apart, with old linemen missing assignments and lining up wrong and things like that. That's what surprised me the most is that mentally it just didn't seem like Kentucky was in the game. They just weren't mentally prepared. And that goes back to coaching, yeah, but it also goes back to players who maybe thought, well,
we're better than we think we are. After that walkover against Southern miss and so many people, and you know, they hear it telling them how they're going to blow out South Carolina, which I never thought what happened, but I thought they'd win. I did think it would be a grind him out game with maybe the last possession coming into play, either a team needing to score or needing to keep the ball away from the other guys. And it looked like it was going to be that way,
didn't it. At halftime it was ten to six, And of course Stoop's still kicking himself and always will for going forward early on fourth and one when his team was having trouble moving to football. But of course at the time he thought we may not get a better chance to get a first down this deep and enemy territory. So he goes for it and it fails, and almost immediately he regretted it, said it as much to me at halftime. But here's what he said Monday.
Somebody asked me the question that postgame.
I think it was John, you know about you know, going forward, and that's that's clearly a mistake on me. The game was very tight at that point. Both teams were struggling to move above football.
You know, heck the game, didn't you know.
I think they went up seventeen on like the eighth or ninth possession of the game, and that was on the fourth and one.
I think we had them stopped.
I think they're going to punk the ball, and you know, it's ten to sixth game at that point, and would have been even closer, you know, you know, you know, possibly if i'd have punched the ball there.
I always talk about second guessing. I say it's only fair if you second gays, or if you have an opinion prior to the play and it goes the other way and it doesn't work. It's not fair to second guess after the play. Anybody can do that. But I have to admit at that point I was really surprised
by what I thought was quite the gamble. But then again I thought, well, it is early, but that game at that point had all the trappings, as I said, of the kind of game I thought it was going to be, which was grind them out, maybe not a lot of points scored. Over and under was forty two and a half, so that means it could have been twenty three to twenty. You know, if you go over That is not a huge score in an SEC game,
as you know. But things went downhill after that. They still had their opportunities, and when South Carolina had it fourth and short at a near midfield spot and a fifth year senior jumps off sides. And again keep in mind, now, when you're on defense, you don't listen. You're not supposed to listen to the quarterback. You watch the ball. That's how you react. On offense. You obviously listen for the snapcount defense. You're taught from pewee football on watch the football.
But people fall for the hard count, don't they. We saw Aaron Rodgers in action last night and he is the master of the hardcount, and a lot of quarterbacks have become so good at it. And here was a freshman for South Carolina drown Kentucky offside. So it all turned on that and it went from bad to worse. So they've got these days to clean things up. And remember they don't practice on Monday, not a hard physical practice, Tuesday, Wednesday,
a little bit on Thursday, walk through Friday. That's what you do to get ready for Georgia. Georgia does the same. But Georgia is going to come in here basically with better players at virtually every position. I think Kentucky's got a cornerback and Maxwell Hairston who could measure up obviously Dion Walker. I think in all fairness, the two insidelnebackers d Eric Jackson and Jamon Johnson could measure up with SEC teams. But anybody in the offense right now, well
in Theory Key and Barrion Brown. But Dane made a great catch on Saturday. Barrion was just kind of out of it Saturday, So it's not impossible, but it's really improbable.
Now.
Kentucky has beaten Georgia a couple of times. It's been a while. Rich Brooks was the head coach when they beat the Bulldogs twice. We'll hear from him on Thursday show kind of a special presentation about Kentucky Georgia under Rich Brooks. Carson Beck, the leader naturally for Georgia, the quarterback who is among the top quarterbacks listed in the QB rankings by Bleacher Report. He is in the top five, he didn't quite make the top five. Number seven is
my man, Dylan Gabriel. Never met him, but got to love the name. Of course at Oregon Carson Beck is sixth right now according to Bleacher Report, cam Ward of Miami, number four, Kyle McCord of Syracuse, number three, Jalen Milroll of Alabama, two is quinn Ewers of Texas, and number one Jackson Dart of Ole, miss So Kentucky will see Dart, they'll see yours, they'll see the kid from Missouri. Obviously, Carson Beck's coming in. It's just a rough worksheet for
the Wildcats. In fact, Georgia is first in the apeop plele Texas, Ohio State, Alabama, Ole, miss So there's three the top five on the UK schedule, Missouri, Tennessee, let's see Penn State is eighth, Oregon ninth, Miami tenth, and Southern cal is eleventh. Made a big jump for them Louisville nineteenth this week. So yeah, it is going to be one rough season. I want to tip my cap to my broadcast partner on Kentucky Volleyball, Leah Edmund. She started her broadcast career with US on SEC Plus and
she now is moving up a little bit. She'll still work some SEC plus broadcasts, but will work some other matches on the mothership on the SEC network. I think she's got three assignments coming up, and we'll keep you posting on that. But of course she is a great volleyball player, maybe the best in UK history. Four time All Conference, four time All American, and she graduated right before they won the national title. But they were standing
on her shoulders, hers and many others. And she is now playing for the Atlanta Vibe, playing professionally for the Atlanta Vibe in the Pro Volleyball Federation. She's in her fifth year as a professional. That just blows my mind. But does a nice job as a broadcaster. Great volleyball player and now moving up like a lot of folks who got your starter with your old dad here, So good luck to her. I'm so proud when they're ready
to leave the nest and make the big leap. Tim couches next year on The Big Bluon Sider six thirty Wlap Welcome back to the Big Bluon Sider. We don't get to say this often enough on the show. We're joined now by a Hall of Famer. That would be mister Tim Couch. Of course, you know I'm Kentucky quarterback legendary and now going in to the College Football Hall of Fame, Tim, welcome back. We've edge on the show before, but this is the first year right on the eve of induction. How excited are you?
I'm super excited, Dick. I mean, you know, it's a tremendous honor, very humbled by you being recognized in this year's twenty twenty four Hall of Fame class, going in with a great group of guys, and you know, just very thankful for my time at Kentucky and for the coaches teammates that I had an opportunity to play with, and you know, just just a great thanks fell in the place for me, you know, with coach Mommy coming in and putting in the air rate offense and uh,
you know, very it suited my skill set perfectly and was able to have a great run by my time at Kentucky. So I'm very, very thankful and grateful for it.
You were talking last night briefly on the show with Mark Stoops and Tom leg and I could tell what you really wanted to say is you would love to take all your teammates in there with you, wouldn't you? Yeah?
Absolutely, you know, you know this is you know, we played the ultimate team sport and you know so to to get an individual recognition is you know, just something that I'm kind of kind of uncomfortable with, to be honest, because there were so many people that helped me get there, and you know, I wish I could take all those guys with me, and I certainly, you know, when I'm on that stage, I'll be thinking about my teammates and and very appreciative of, you know, having them, you know,
to play with in my time at Kentucky, and you know, hopefully they feel part of this as well.
You know what was part of how Mummy's genius with the passing game? And obviously he had the right man pulling the trick, but you also had the right guys catching the footballs and Craig Yeast and Anthony White and Michelson and all these guys. You guys made it look so easy on offense. Why is that? With the air raid when it's run right, you can't have a bunch of rum dumbs out there. But when you've got the right people running it, why does it look so simple?
You know, I think the offense in itself is very simple. You know, the concepts are simple. It's not a very complicated system to learn it doesn't take very long to install. But like you said, Nick, it's you know, you can have the greatest, you know, scheme in the world, but if you don't have a quarterback who's who's accurate with the football make quick decisions, you know, can can get
your process information quickly. And then you have receivers who were great with run after the catch, you know, because a lot of the air raid is the shorts intermediate passing game. So you're relying on those guys to break tackles, the quarterback to be accurate, to put the ball in the spot where receivers can catch and run. And you know, so we had all those guys, like you said, we had Craig Yeast, who was, you know, one of the
best receivers in the history of the SEC. You know, Lance Micholson, Quinn mccoor, James Whalen, Uh, Jimmy Robinson, you know, so many guys, Kevin Coleman. Uh. You know, obviously Anthony White was unbelievable out of the backfield. It's uh, we we just had a perfect, perfect set of guys for to run that scheme. It was uh, it was just a match mad and heaven with with coach, mommy coming in and the guys we had there on campus.
Okay, I've got you on the phone. So I got to ask you this because I have Anthony White on He's on every Sunday morning. But I always bring up the fact that his nickname was aunt B and you hung that on him. Why did you call him? Uh?
You know, I can't remember exactly. It seems it seems like somebody in practice said that, you know, we called him aunt and then somebody said aunt be ballin or something because you know, they couldn't stop him. You know, he was uh he was, you know, running for one hundred catching for one hundred some games, and he was just he was just a you know, all around kind of guy. So we just started calling him aunt Bee
for short, and it just kind of stuck. But uh, what what what a commnutal football player?
Well, oh, now that helps me because I had the mental image of an B from Andy Griffith, So now a short for Anthony. Okay, that helps me so much. But I also bring up the fact Tim and you may embarrass him a little, I don't think it does that. When he left UK, he was a top five all time combo back wasn't he. I mean, he was a perfect guy for that offense.
He really was. I mean, if you're going to run that type of system, you know, you need a running back. You know, Anthony had wide receiver skills. You know, he could have been a wide receiver, but he also had great running back skills as well. And he could and he could block. You know, he could pick up flitzes. You know, he was unbelievable catching the ball out of the backfield, you know, third and third and medium, third
and short. When we were in a passing game and I saw man coverage, you know, it was either you know, Craig or one on one on the outside. If Craig didn't win, I was coming underneath to to Anthony because I knew he was going to be matched up with a linebacker or potentially a safety maybe, and he was going to win that match up every time. You know, with the option routes and the angle routes we were running, uh some of those things. He was just literally a perfect fit for this game. Yep.
And you mentioned Craig and his speed and of course he not only caught passes but return kicks in the NFL. But people, somebody said this to me the other day. You know, Tim Kasch didn't throw deep berry off and I said, yeah, because they dropped two safeties back because they knew Yeast could kill it back there. But Craig could still, as you said, catch and run. I mean, he was just the greatest.
He was. He was, you know, in my opinion. I know there's been a lot of great players at Kentucky, and no disrespect to any of those other guys, but obviously I'm biased to Craig. I think he's the best receiver ever played at Kentucky. You know, he was just the guy. Was incredible man. And you know, like you said, teams, that was how they tried to defend us with keeping two safeties back because they couldn't leave one on one on the outside with Craig. And when they did, that's
when we took our deep shots. And but you know, as much as we were throwing the ball as kind of a ball controlled passing attack, so a lot of those screens and things we considered those runs, to be honest with you know, those were just tall sweeps us get on the outside, you know, get the ball in Craig East in space, or you know, throw a screen
to Anthony or something like that. Those were extension of the run game for us, and if teams wanted to sit back and play cover two, cover four, and we just had to kind of, you know, take our you know, you pick and choos underneath and just take what the defense is given us.
You're one of three quarterbacks going in with the class of twenty twenty four. It also includes Alex Smith, who helped you talk to the top of the polls under Urban Meyer and I was really pleased to see as well. The kid from Appalachian State going in. Gosh, Harmani Edwards. Right, when you get together with guys like that, Tim, do they ask do you guys talk about the systems you're in. Do they ask you what it was like to run the air raid?
Yeah? We always talk about, you know, schemes that we were involved in, players we played with, you know, things like that. And you know, it's a great class. Like you said, we've got Randy Moss going in, Larry Fitzgerald, Warwick Dunn, Julius Peppers who just went into the NFL Hall of Fame as well, So that's a very strong class. Loop you know, it's just you know, a list goes on and on, and you know, we just just you know, got to take a look at that list. It's very
humbling to go in with those guys. And you know, I think Hall of Fame sent me some information on the Hall and I think they said there's been something like five point five million people play college football and there's a little over a thousand guys that have been selected to the Hall of Fame. So obviously a very selective group of guys. And you know, completely honored to be going in.
Talking to Tim Kuch of course, UK Hall of Fame quarterback and now the College Football Hall of Fame going to be honored at the game on Saturday. But yeah, what a class. And I love seeing Danny woodhead. It was a running back at Chaddin State, you know, a small college player, but man, what a great player. And then it kind of makes me feel a little bit old because I grew up watching the Nebraska Oklahoma series and Dewey Selman part of the Salmon family going in.
He played at Oklahoma back in the early seventies. The game has changed so much though, Tim, through the years and now it's much more about offense, isn't it.
Yeah, it's changed, you know, so much. You know, I think, you know, when I was coming into the SEC, the SEC was really, you know, very much a running conference. You know, it was known for having great running backs. Really the only team at that time that was kind of throwing the ball quite a bit was Coach Spurrier down down in Florida. And then you know, Coach Mummy and Leach came in and just completely you know, kind
of revolutionized the game, and you know it. You know, I was doing broadcasting for several years after I was done playing, and it was it was always amazing to me to go to all these campuses and meet with these coaches that had different spots, and how all of them you know, would come to me and say, hey, we we came to Kentucky in ninety seven or ninety eight and saw what you guys are doing, and we're still running a version of that even today, you know,
twenty years later. So you know, it was pretty cool to be on the ground floor that thing, the air raid, and to make it popular and to see that it's still very prevalent across the country today.
You didn't get to spend as much time, i know, as you like with Mike Leach because he just went on to great and greater things in college football, helped Oklahoma win a national thailand and then made a name for himself. But what was it like, Tim? I mean, he was such a free spirit and a unique kind of guy, wasn't he.
Yeah, he was, you know, the most unique coach I think I ever played for. And he was Mike was one of those guys that you know, you go in his office and talk to him, and you know, he would talk to you about anything except football. You know, he wanted to talk about pirates and and you know, wars and every and history and all this kind of stuff. And he was just a very different, very different guy.
But he was also extremely intelligent. He was ahead of his time as far as the passing game goes, and he had a very clear vision for what he wanted an offense to look like and how he wanted to
install it. And he was very precise. You know, he coached our wide receivers and was the offensive coordinator when I was there, and what he was all those wide receivers every single day about you know, just doing the little things right where you know, if you're split is supposed to be you know, inside the numbers, and that's where you better line up. If you're supposed to run at twelve yards, I don't want you at thirteen, don't want you at eleven. You need to be precise. And
you know that's what made our offense so successful. We were all so dialed in and locked into the to the little details which which made everything work.
It was all so shocking when he left us way too soon that that had to be a punch and a gut for you.
Yeah, you know, I really hated to see that. And you know, Mike and I have we kept in touch over the years and would and would talk, and you know, I just talked to him a few months before that and was completely shocked by the news and saddened by it. And you know, I really wish it, you know, that
he was around. I know he would be, you know, in Las Vegas in December celebrating with me going into the Hall of Fame, and you know, really really just take that for his family, and he was such a great guy and surely he's very missed.
We're talking with UK legendary quarterback Tim Kachi is being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame at the end of the year, and he will be honored at the game coming up Saturday at Kroger Field. Back with more in just a minute on the Big Blue Sider here on six thirty w LAP. We're talking with Tim Kash, Kentucky Hall of Fame quarterback, and this December he'll be
inducted into the Football College Football Hall of Fame. Honored this weekend at the stadium that some people say is the stadium just couch build at least the expansion, Tim, you had a lot to do with that. People people trying to get tickets. But when you set foot, you come back quite often, when you set foot on that field, inside that stadium. How does that make you feel?
You know, I think the very the first thing I feel is a sense of pride, you know what we were able to accomplish, and and just how fun that the game was when we were there, and you know how how into it the fans were. And you know, because Kentucky football was kind of a rough point there when I first got to UK and and they weren't winning many games, they were running the option, it was
wasn't a very exciting style of football. And then we came in and you know, we were going spread offense, four or five wide receivers and throwing the ball all over the field, and uh, you know, it's just just you know, a great time to be playing at Kentucky. And and you know that coaching staff we had, you know, you talk about coach Mummy and Leish and Hatcher and Sonny Dykes and Tony Franklin and all those guys. We had so many creative minds on the offensive side of
the ball. And you know, like we talked about earlier, we had a great fit of players who run that system as well. So, yeah, just to set the pride when I'll walk into the stadium about what we were able to accomplish while while I was playing there.
You know, you mentioned Mummy and it You're right. He was such an interesting individual as well. You could see why he and Leech were so tight. But it was interesting to me tim when things went went south for how here and of course the fans were all over him. And then when Kentucky was looking for a new coach a dozen years ago, people were lobbying like crazy for how Mummy, Disciple somebody to be the next town Mummy. So you know, as long as you win, that's what
it's all about. But that people want to be entertained too, don't they.
Yeah, I think so. And you know, it's just a you know, I think people see, you know how teams have been very successful with that system across the country and other places. And you know, it was a fun style of football to watch. I think it was very popular obviously with our fan base here a Kentucky and and people didn't want to see that come back, you know, and coach Shuts did bring bring it back for a
little bit. He brought Neil Brown back here for a couple of years, and see Neils went on to do great things as a head coach at West Virginia, and uh so it's you know, it's ah. It was a great, great, great offense to play in, and it's very popular, like I said, with the fans and obviously with cornerbacks and receivers love it. And you know, it's just it's just a lot of fun to play in that type of system.
Yeah. I got to ask you, being a father, do you have to queue up video to show your son what you do? Because I remember Jamal Mashburn when he wanted to the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame. He said his kids didn't really believe that he was a great player at the NBA. He had to show them video. Do you have to do that?
I've done it before. Yeah, yeah, when they when they were smaller, I had to do that. And you know, they used to love to watch those videos when they when they were little. And you know, now I've got a I've got a freshman in college and a freshman in high school. My oldest son is he signed a scholarship to play for Holy Cross up in Boston, so he's, uh, he's playing defensive end up there. And then my youngest
son is a freshman at Lectern Christian Academy. So you know, they're they're both good athletes and good students and you know, certainly very proud of them defensive ends.
So you got to You've got to talk to him about what it's like to go attack a quarterback.
Yeah, I told him. You know, he was playing quarterback up until like eighth grade and then he switched over to the defensive end. And I was like, I can't tell you anything about playing defensive end other than I don't like those guys. That's that's all I know about.
He's going to relish the licks he puts on quarterbacks. You mentioned broadcasting and you stepped away from that, and you and your brother now very successful businessman, and uh, a tip of the cap to your brother. I always love what he did at EK. I keep reminding people the Greg Couch was the last QB to lead e K you to an undefeated OVC record and an OVC title. So and it always will be now that they're out
of the league. But anyhow, you were on your way to a pretty good broadcasting career when you stepped away. Now Tom Brady, a guy you know, a little bit has started and it kind of got lukewarm reviews. But for crying out loud, he's a rookie. But if you could give him some advice, you giving Tom Brady advice on broadcasting, what would it be?
You know? I think the biggest thing that I had to learn is, you know, you do have to prepare like you're playing, you know, I mean it is so much prep work as far as you know, watching film, understanding schemes and systems and game plans, and talking to coaches and players throughout the week to get a feel from what they're going to try to do that week, so you can go on TV and explain that. And you know, for me, you know, I don't want to
say dumb it down, that's not the right word. But I wanted to talk like I was talking to like maybe like my mother at home, who, yeah, who knows who watches football, but she doesn't understand like the you know, really inside of x's and O. So you can get on there and you know, obviously Tom could talk about you know, the game as in depth as anyone who's
ever played it. But you know, you have to make it simple for the people watching on TV so they you know, you can say, oh, it's cover too, but you know, no one, no one really knows what Cover two is unless you you know, you've studied the game, played the game, so so you make it you know, you make it simple for the fans watching at home so they can follow along with you and understand what you're talking about. But you know, Tom, you know he's
going to be great in whatever he does. You know, it's it's very difficult to walk in that booth and call a game that if you've never done it before. He's just going to get better and better with with with rests in each game he does.
Yeah, they keep comparing comparing him to Greg Olsen, who was not great when he started. None of us was not that I know.
No.
Yeah, before I let you go, I got to ask you. I'm sure your heart went out to what your Wildcats and a rock Vandergriff. He had a rough day at the office against South Carolina. But that's life in sec isn't it.
Yeah, that's the way it goes, you know, I mean this, Uh, in this league, anyone can embarrass you quickly if you're not not on top of your game. And obviously we didn't play well. You know, I'm not going to make any excuses. We didn't play well up front, quarterback didn't really have many opportunities to play well. And you know we just in South Carolina played great. Give them credit. That's a good defense they got after us. And you know, things can go go go south on you pretty quickly
in this league if you're not playing well. And you know, I think we'll bounce back. I think we've got a very talented football team. I love our coaching staff. Obviously, you know coach Tups is the winning his coach we've ever had here, So I have all the faith in the world that he's going to get this, get these guys to rally rallied up, and get them going back in the right direction. And obviously we've got a tough
one this week with Georgia. But you know, it doesn't get any it done get easier, you know, I think I saw we played five of the top seven teams in the country coming up over the next several weeks. So those schedules just brutal. But you know, we've got the guys that can go turn it around, and you know, I'm still confident in those guys.
People knocking the offense, of course, that's what fans do, but it's too soon that I have no idea what to make it this offense yet. And I'm sure you know more about this stuff than I do. But uh, it's it's going to be tough after this week, isn't it.
Yeah, you know you said it didn't get any easier, you know, with with Georgia and that defense coming into town, so you know, it is it is kind of hard to see what we have yet offensively, you know, because you know we got to you know a little over half a game in week one with the weather and then you know, so didn't play well at all, you know, only thirty yards passing or so in week two. So you know, these guys, you know, just have to get it gone, get it to you know, get everyone on
the same page and executing a game plan. And you know, and it takes everyone. You know, it takes the you know, the offensive line given protection and Brock making quick decisions receivers, you know, getting that out of brace catching football is getting separation from the defenders. And you know, it takes all eleven guys on that side of the ball to
make it, make it work and make it look good. So, you know, hopeing they can bounce back a little this week and get a little momentum build on that.
Tim Cash will be honored this weekend for his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame ceremonies actually in December in Las Vegas. Uh, you got some time to put a nice speech together. I know you're probably in your mind already thinking about that. I know your dad would be so proud of you. He is looking down on you right now. But I do appreciate the time and looking forward to seeing you Saturday.
I appreciate that. Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Jeff of Coral is up next in hour number two here on the Big Boone Sider six thirty wlap. Welcome back. We did not get a chance to hear from Jeff, picaorl last night except for the closing minutes of the state wide show. He ducked us, ladies and gentlemen. But you can run, you cannot hide a champion. Welcome back to the Big Boone Sider. He playing god to come on laught night. Yeah, just at a senior moment, but we will obviously toss and turn this game in our
minds up until Saturday. But you also got a Jeff, as much as you can put it out of your mind, get ready for Georgia. But if you're a Kentucky player, I got to wonder, is their confidence shaken after that game, especially with the huge task coming up.
Yeah, I think you're You're confidence is shattered because I think you probably went into that game a little bit of we're a double digit favorite where Kentucky were playing at home. You know, that kind of attitude, and they got to hand it to him. Look, it doesn't matter if you're Vanderbilt or you're Georgia, you have got to strap it on every single week. Now. I know coach said yesterday that he watched the tape and uh, you know he he he said, the one thing they played
they played hard, they just didn't play smart. Well, to me, that was the worst game of his entire tenure. Here, I don't I can't think of another game other than maybe the Tennessee game when you know, a couple of years ago when they had Josh and Denny Snow when they just laid.
An egg a couple of years ago.
Probably, I mean it's but I mean, I mean, at least at Vandy they moved the ball of but they just had you know, stupid penalties and they had the dumb plays. Here, they couldn't do anything. I mean here, starting quarterback three for ten. His quarterback rating for the game was I've never even seen this one point two. Yeah, that's unbelievable.
You had PFF grading the old lineman Marcus Cox had a five out of one hundred.
Yeah.
Uh. And obviously South Carolina's got tremendous edge rushers. And every time we do keys of the game, one of the first words out of your mouth. Is edge set the edge?
Yeah?
They never came close to that, did they.
But no, But here's the problem, Dick. You don't think George's got great they're all five stars. Yeah, you don't think that. You know, all these teams in the league. Kentucky's got great edge rushers, you know. So it's every week. So you've got to figure now. To me, the biggest problem is this because you tried a bunch of different things and then you know, basically for the last ten
minutes of the game, Gavin was in their quarterback. You've got to figure out what you can do to move the football?
Uh? You know?
And and again I made this analogy with you the other night, and Tom and I were talking about this the other day.
Is you know, when you're a.
Baseball pitcher and you're getting rocked all over the way, she go, Okay, what can I gow to get a strike? Is it my change up? Is it a fastball? Is it a sliders? What can I do to just get out of this with minimal you know, minimal damage. Well, that's what you have to figure out. What can we do to move the football?
Is it?
Is it a short passing game? They threw one screen in the game, and you know that I can remember, and I kind of went through the plays and at one screen. They didn't do that because they're not a screen team. You know, they are teams that love screens. They are teams that don't. Kentucky does it for whatever reason.
You know.
Then if you watched Aaron, your guy, Aaron Rodgers on Monday Night football is a great example. Samansus has had an unbelievable pass rush.
So what do you do?
He went to a short passing game, you know, just to quick outs, quick in things like that. What do you do to move the football? That's what they first have to figure out.
Well, for a while there they ran between the tackles and yeah, you guys upstairs were marveling at how effective it was late first half, trying to win the last four minutes, which I thought they did by controlling the ball. And I have to admit, Jeff, I was very skeptical about Demi Simo Karnbay and his ability to play power over. But he did it running between the tackles because look, with all his speed, he still couldn't get to the
edge against South Carolina. Correct, But they did something else and they moved the football. Now it's stall. They settled for a field goal, but I guess circumstances dictated they just never quite went back to that or or did South Carolina do something to take that away.
No.
I just think that as you start to fall farther and further behind, you've got to, you know, you've got to try to get the ball down the field somehow, you know, because that you know the drives are taking six seven minutes. When you just sit there and hand the ball off feel straight ahead, you're already behind. I thought, you know what, you're probably going to lose this game. At that point it was twenty one to six or whatever it was. And to me, it's just like, let's
get something out of this game. You ran to Jets sweep what three, four or five times? It didn't work once, you know, not one time. To me, when you've got a fast athletic player at any position, the way to negate his speed, his quickness is what run right at it right because now if he chooses the side, if he steps to the outside, then the blocker just gets in the way and the running back runs inside. If he tries to rush towards the inside. You just get
on his outside shoulder. The running back sees that he you know, he goes to the outside, or if he tries to bullet rush you, and you are obviously much bigger and much stronger, can just bull him out of the way.
Yeah, and it all starts, of course, with the guys up front. And we just mentioned the O line some of the grades. College Football Report as Kentucky a top one of its lists of worst offenses for the weekend.
We know that.
But I was talking to Tim Koutch on the show earlier, I don't know enough about this offense to say people are already complaining about the OC, which they do. I get that. Sure, I don't know enough. We haven't seen enough yet of this offense.
Right.
No, remember you only get two quarters in the first game. Yeah that that doesn't really hurt because you lost guys starting to get tired and having to play through you know that. And then you jump right into the second game and you're all excited and stuff, and then you get you know, punched in the mouth and now you're you know, now you're going up against Mike Tyson basically, and so you know, what do you do to defend yourself. What can they do? I think, yes, the jury is
still out. Look, this is an offense. It's worked, it's a proven offense. It's worked all over the country. It can work here. But again, they just have to It's all credicated on running the football, so that that's that's the key. And this team just simply couldn't move the ball at all until they did that one series when they when they ran it up the gut. And I just think you got to get back to that because the deep passing game against that team just didn't work.
He just didn't have time and I don't think he'll probably have time this week either.
What did you think of the comments that Stoops made at his news conference yesterday? What they were quite telling. He was very blunt about our PO situations. You know, he was saying, look, hand it off or pass it. I guess he was saying this, this this particular offensive group isn't built for our PO. I don't know what did you make of that?
You know, that's interesting because I've never played in that style before, so I don't know. You know, I do know as an option quarterback in high school and then when we got to Kentucky with Perry Moss. We ran, you know, a version of the option called the veer, and you have to make a decision. I think that's what Mark was saying is a decision has to be made almost immediately. You can't dwaddle with it because if you do that gives them time. Look, you have keys,
you know you hear this all the time. You're running an option. My keys at defensive end, he's unblocked. If he comes down, you pitch it. If he stays out, run it. Okay. The same with the RPO. You have a key. If that guy comes up, you throw it. If that guy stays back, you run it. But you can't dawdle.
You can't.
You've got to go. It's almost say. You always hear a say guy's running east and west. Can't run east and west on kickoff. Can't do that, I'll pot You got to run north south, you know. And that's the same way with this. It's a read, but it's a quick breath. And again we're talking about a guy who hasn't played really in a football game in over three years, and now he's he's got now what four or five quarters under his belt, and I'm gonna give him a little more slack.
I don't recall them doing that much. Maybe they do at Georgia, so you know, whatever skills he developed down there, right, and whatever reps he got at practice, maybe they did. Maybe they didn't include the RPO, but I don't know what anything where you've got to hesitate at all against those edge guys from South Carolina. That's a recipe for disaster, isn't it.
Well, I yes, and it's a recipe for disaster. And most of the SEC team is because the one thing the SEC is built upon, and this is what And I always go back to the story with Tom Brenneman when he was doing the National Championship Game, Florida was getting ready to play Ohio State and he said, yeah, yeah, they've got kicks offensive, Lindman, they're going to be in the NFL next year. You know, they've got you know, great running backs, like they're a machine. And I said, Tom,
they've never seen the SEC before. Remember the SEC had to Florida had two defensive ends too, were happened to be first round draft picks that year, and they just they just their speed just killed Ohio State and Florida won the National championship, and that's what the SEC has to speed and every team has it.
Jeff of Coral is the color analyst for ARE the Kentucky Sports Network and we will also the sports director w TTV. Can you come back and talk more football with Jeff in just a minute hearing a big Moonsider six thirty wlap Welcome back on our celebrity highline. Jeffiicorrel's color analyst on the UK Sports Network and you also hear him and Tom Leach and yours truly where a Wildcat whip every Thursday as we go a little bit deeper to prepare Wildcat fans for the upcoming game. It's
those Georgia Bulldogs, of course, coming in this week. And Jeff, you and I have covered this program for a long time. You played against Georgia, played against the good Georgia teams, but it's that program has never been as good, even the herschel Walker years as it is now. How and it's even tougher now because everybody's pouring millions into their programs, their facilities, their coaching staffs. Why has Georgia risen above the rest at least among you know, three or four schools.
Kirby's just done a fantastic job. A great coach.
Uh.
You know, he has a great lineage behind him who you know, the coaches he's learned from in the past. And then once you start rolling, you know, once that ball starts rolling, it rolls. Man, it's downhill. I mean Alabama, look, Nick's gone. They're still recruiting five star players. But for whatever reason, Georgia, I thought they had a really nice single with Mark Rick, and he was a really good
guy too, and a good coach. But boy, Kirby Smart is just taken it to the next level and they have become the team not just in the Southeastern Conference but in the country.
Uh.
I mean, Ohio State's got a machine there, Michigan's got a machine, but it ain't anything like what Georgia had.
Yeah, you're right about Rick, good Man, good coach, a great recruiter. They got so much talent at Georgia, but just couldn't quite close the deal.
Could he, now, you know, And that's that's too bad. Like I said, he was a really just a good person, a good football coach, but you know, there was just something there that he just couldn't get past that Alabama, you know when he was there, and and even Florida for a couple of years had had a good thing going. But again you have to look at you know who
they who these teams take as the next coach. Can they continue that line you know that that they made and Kirby did, and like I said, and he even took it up another not. It's gonna be interesting to see how Caitlin de Boor does in the next year or two. It looks like he's done a great job. He's still getting the five star recruits and they look pretty good, you know, the two Saturdays we've seen them.
What do you think as a media member of the backlash now, it's it's about as acute as it's ever been with Stoops because this is probably the most difficult situation since his first couple of years, and expectations are so high.
Yeah, I think that the media and you've got to go back three years and you're seven and five. You said, okay, you had any injury here and there, and you lost the game you shouldn't have lost. And then you go to last year and I thought there were some expectations, you know, you had a.
New quarterback coming in.
They was throwing a you know, a boatload of touchdown passes. It was a real good touchdown interception ratio, and it just didn't work out last year and you finished seven and five. So now paper going okay. And then you had the FIASCA with Texas A and M to add in with coach and I think a lot of people kind of soured on that and they haven't gotten over it. And now I think everything is under a microscope, and
now it's even more so. Look, South Carolina, for whatever reason, and we talk about this a lot sick on the show, is some teams have your number, you know, they just it's like Missisi used to be Mississippi State. Mississippi State could be three and five when they met Kentucky. But for whatever reason, it was going to be a battle. Right now, it just seems like South Carolina said it was an ugly game on both sides. South Carolina didn't
do anything. Their quarter was supposed to be runner. He didn't, you know, he got hurt. They didn't do anything offensively that was outstanding.
He had.
They scored thirty one points somehow.
Well, and you know, you chopped up the numbers of the week prior and pointing out that Dean Walker was an over but everyone else got to eat. And when you really look closely, and I'm not making any excuses or trying to put a blanket or a bow on this, but you really can't point too many fingers. You have to point a few because of the breakdowns in the secondary. But otherwise I thought defensively, Jeff, they were pretty sound. And as you said, I braced myself and we talked
about this in the pregame. I braced myself for that quarterback getting loose running, yes, chucking the ball, and he really he made a couple of plays He's going to do that, But that didn't really happen, did it.
No, Kentucky, I believe it is the number eight defense in the country right now. They still yet to give up one hundred yards running the football in two games combined. Yeah, so yeah, they've done a pretty good job. Now. They had a couple of bonehead plays where they left the guy wide open, you know, and that's I think that was schematic. The way Kentucky's defense was. If ty Bryant goes outside, they throw to the inside guy. If Tiger's inside, they throw to the outside guy. They had three guys
on a ass route and two defenders. The cornerback got one guy on the edge, and two guys are running basically about ten yards apart.
Ty.
You know, Ty goes and it's not his fault. He's got to pick one. Can't just stay in the middle, and uh, you know, the other guy's wide open and it's a touchdown. It's that was just a great schematic call by the offensive coordinator, you know over there ligings for uh for South Carolina. But yeah, they're they're they're pretty good. They're the defense looks good. I mean, it's not great, but it looks pretty dark good, pretty stout against the run, that's for sure.
Yeah. Uh, and if you can control that up front, you know. So now the question is can you avoid First of all, can you avoid beating yourself against Georgia. But you know, you go back to that game. I was talking, uh, I think it was last night about the game when Kentucky went down there for the first time. Will Levis facing Georgia.
Yeah, yeah, and he.
Quote unquote manages the game pretty well. That kind of put him on everybody's radar. And you got to do that with Georgia, don't you. I mean, you can't go in there slinging it down the field and running trick plays. You got to first of all, keep from beating yourself. Can they do that?
Yeah?
I mean, you know, you talk about that game with Lewis. They're they're that ball sitting on the ground. If they just put their hand on it, it's Kentucky ball. Georgia doesn't score. If he picks it up and runs the other way, it's an easy touchdown.
You know.
You Yes, you've got to get lucky because look, let's face it, they don't have the talent that Georgia does it. That's the fact.
Nobody does.
But I think the defense can't blow up like they did last year where everyone's doing their own thing. You know, coach talks about this all the time. Just do your job, you know, don't try to be a superhuman person. You're you're not going to be against this team. Then they're gonna have to get some breaks. They're gonna have to get a fumble, they're gonna have to get an interception, they're gonna have to run the football, control the clock.
You cannot there's no way you're going to get in the you know, a scoreboard contest with them where you're you know, trying to play pinball and score forty points, because it's just not going to happen. So it's got to be a game like that was a couple of years ago, a low scoring, defensive minded type of football game. But to do that, you got to move to football.
Uh. You know, we were talking about how Kentucky has beaten Georgia a couple of times in the last eighteen years, one of them in six here in Lexon and the other one at nine, both of them under Rich Brooks, who will be our celebrity. I don't know what we want to call it, but he'll open the broadcast with with our celebrity monologue. I guess we can say, as Jojo Kimp did last week and Bill Ransdale the week before, and I chatted with him, We're going to hear the
conversation on the show on Thursday, Jeff. But he talked about that six game when the goalpost came down. I know you worked that game, and he said, and I mentioned there was an interception right before halftime, which was huge. Uh. And then of course Trevar Linley's of Matthew Stafford essentially end of the game. But he said, we had so many guys make plays, so many guys who came to Kentucky kind of unheralded, you know, like a Wesley Woodyard or like a Roger Williams and just made plays and
got it done. And that's what it's going to take, isn't it.
Yeah.
Like I said, look, it doesn't matter if you're a two star, three star, four star, five star. Just go out there and play the game.
Have some fun.
I think that's a lot of times we forget that this is this is still a sport. And I say this all the time. I said this about the last couple of Caliperi teams. Didn't look like they were having fun out there on the basketball court. You know, this is a job. Well, if you're going at it that way, it's the wrong attitude and you're not going to win. And I think this football team has to enjoy themselves. Good out there, have fun. Look, you're playing against the
number one team in the country. Hey, they put their pants on just like you. Let's prove that. Hey, op along on the field with you. You know, I could play for you, and we're going to beat you.
To prove it.
That's what you have to go into the game.
As Jeff Acoro is the color analyst for the UK Sports Network, he'll be beside Tom Leach on the Wildcats take on Georgia. Listen for the two of those guys on the Wildcat Whip, which should hit your social media on Friday, and watch for Jeff on WTVQ. Thank you brother for you at the ballgame.
Well, I'll see you first at South of Wrigley. Get a free signs.
That's right, that's where we take the Wildcat Whip. Thank you sir. Up Next lexing is John Wynn Miller. We talk about his new book and we go back in time with Kentucky basketball here on six point thirty Wlap welcome back to the Big Blue and sider joining us now our celebrity hotline is a longtime friend and colleague from just a few years ago we worked together on
the Kentucky Colonel. Now John win Miller a retired journalist but an author, and we will talk sports because as we had John on before, he and his siblings literally grew up with RUPs runs. But we're going to talk first about the fact John, welcome back when I when I first had you on your your novel accent adventure book, The Hunt for the peggyc was doing well and you
just keep racking up accolades. Don't you now you're you're in the running or are you still in the running for a Hemingway Book Award or tell me about that?
I know that was actually two years ago when it first came out, and it did win or ended up being a finalist and a bunch of awards, including the Military Writers Society of America, the Hemingway Award, I was a semi finalist, and the Clive Cussler Adventure Writers Contest, I was a semifinalist. So I'm crossing the finish line close to the lead, but I'm not winning.
Well you're in a race, though, man, that's what's important. And this was your first book.
Yeah, it's crazy. You know.
I'd been a journalist for more than forty years, and I became a journalist when I walked into the Kentucky Colonel almost fifty years ago, because I wanted to be a novelist. But I realized I didn't know how to write and I had nothing interesting to write about.
So I figured.
Well, journalism will teach me how to write, and then I eventually became a foreign correspondent and editor and publishers, so I had some pretty interesting things to write about. And during COVID, I decided I'm gonna sit down and write that novel I've been thinking about for decades, and lo and bhold, I got it out. I got a publisher and got it out, which to me was amazing.
I mean, my age to be able to sit and write like that for as long as I did, and to do all the research, because they say, right, what you know? Well, I wrote about stuff I knew absolutely nothing.
Right, Right. This was a chase. This was two boats chasing each other during World War Two. And the last time you're on you were talking to me about all the research you had to do about just in great detail. You didn't exactly go Tom Clancy. Do you thank God? Because I skim that when I read Clancy. But but you were able to explain why things work how they work. I'm sure it was enjoyable, and I'm sure you had a good editor who could tell you if you're getting
bogged down too much in that. But now you've got a sequel, right.
Yep, yep, I've got a sequel. It's called Rescue Run, and it takes up a lot of the same characters, the ones who actually survived the first book. And that our hero is the same Captain Jake Rogers, who was the captain of the Peggy c that escaped the U
boat in volume one. So Rogers leads his crew on another daring mission UH to rescue his beloved father from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam, but there's a shocking betrayal forces them to flee across occupied Europe with the S of course, with the SS, the French gangsters, a ruthless bounty hunter in hot pursuit, and even a real serial killer. So I threw in a bunch of stuff, and it's almost all real people and actual history.
The only.
Fiction is my characters and the plot, although again it involves a lot of things that really happened, and a lot of famous people like Audrey Hepburn or Marcel Marceau. They all show up at one point or another.
You know, I actually met Marcel Marceau. He came through town. No, he came through town in the early eighties. I was working at WVLK and he came over and was interviewed by Jack Patty and he had done a show at the Opera House, was doing a series of shows and I had gone to see him the night before, and I remember I went into him and a lot and John, by the way, is also a veteran of our karate club here in Lexingon and his study tai chi back
in the day as I did. And I asked Marceau, I said, have you ever studied tai chi because some of your movements are very similar, and he said, yeah, it was something similar to tai chi, but you know, just incorporated all of it. So that's a rare brush with greatness for me.
Wow, that's great. He was pretty amazing. During the war, he was an actor, was starting his training to become a mind based on because he had seen some movies when he was a kid of Charlie Chaplin, so he wanted to be Charlie Chaplin. So he would borrow his father's pants and hat and walk around the house like Charlie Chaplins Chaptain, and out of that then he started developing. He was an artist during the war.
He was young.
He was a forger. He would forge documents. He was Jewish and he forged the document that said he was only seventeen, which meant too young for military service, and he was Protestant, and so he and his brother worked with a group to smuggle Jewish kids out of friends into Switzerland. Yeah, he was actually made a movie about it,
but uh, it's a little known thing about him. And one of the things he would do he would dress up as a boy scout, a Scout leader, and then dress the Jewish kids up in Scout uniforms and take them on trains as if they were going on a day trip to the mountains, and then he would walk them across the mountain into Switzerland. Yeah, and uh, he he did that quite a bit during the war and he never he never got caught. So I use a little bit of that in my novel just because I
just couldn't believe it. Yeah, and then after later on he became a translator for patent he because he could speak three languages. He spoke German, he spoke for she spoke English. So you know, even before he became world famous, he was an amazing human being.
So you had to work him into the book.
Oh absolutely, And a lot of the funny things were that I would be doing research and I would stumble across somebody or something.
I got to get that in the book. I got it here.
I mean, it's crazy, but I even worked in There was a serial killer operating in Paris, a doctor who the Nazis Guestapo sort of knew about and French gangsters sort of knew about, and it kind of used him to eliminate some of the resistance members that they wanted to get rid of. So I worked him into the story. And again it's completely unbelievable. A serial killer operating down the street from Guestapo headquarters for years and finally got caught.
They convicted him of twenty nine murders that they suspect him of several hundred. You know, he would trick resistance members and people he wanted to escape to Spain. He would say he was going to help him, but then he would say, okay, before you leave, you have to be inoculated for various diseases before you can get into Argentina. And he gave him not poison, but numbing. Yeah, he would kind of just knock him out and then take them down in the basement and torture them to death.
So it was pleasant. Yeah, really nice. So that's that's how I've been spending my time.
All right, when we come back, we will we will cleanse your mind of all that. We'll talk some basketball with John Wynn Miller. He is an author. He's an award winning author in fact, and if you read his first book, you enjoyed it. I know The Hunt for the peggyc And the sequel is coming out soon. Rescue Run. We're back in a minute, around six thirty WLAP. Welcome back. We're talking with my longtime friend John Wynn Miller, author of The Hunt for the PEGGYC and Rescue Run the sequel.
Terrific book, the first one, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the second one. But as I said, it's a sports show, John, so I've got to justify having you on. But no, seriously, you know it's hard to believe you walked into the Colonel wanting to be a novelist. I knew I wanted to be a sports writer, and we both end up in the same place. And when you think about college sports now compared to them, it's crazy. And again it's fifty years ago, but it's almost like a time warp
because what we walked into. It remained that way for so long, with you know, student athletes getting laundry money, and now they're being paid, you know, to sign on the dotted line. But it's funny how so many people journalists included, you know, rude the fact that athletes aren't getting anything and now they're complaining that they're getting too much. I don't even know how much sports you follow anymore,
because you're an average sportsman. As I said, your dad was Adolph Rupps lawyer, so RUPs runs partied at your house, they were your friends. Yeah, you know. Yeah, it's so different now, isn't it.
Yeah, Oh, it's completely different.
You know.
Back then they were truly amateur athletes and they if they got paid anything. It was like my father and mother would have them over and let him use the
basement for parties with their girlfriends. And Larry Connelly actually taught me how to shoot a junk shot, so as we had a basketball goal out back, and that just seemed like a normal thing to me, you know, I had him and pat Riley and Tommy Crime at the half and when they lost the national championship to Texas Western, because Larry Conley had a fever of one hundred and four and they were beaten by a better team. Actually that's a better coach team, so you can't make any
excuses for him. But I still had a picture of Tom Krin and Larry Conley in my parents' bedroom watching TV with all of us after the day after they had lost, and my father got a friend who owned the liquor store to get some beer and brought a bunch of beer over for him. So they watched that, and then Tommy Crime decided he was going to teach me how.
To drive a car.
I don't know if I told you this one before, but so we car.
He was in the.
Driveway, uh, and my parents had kind of a wide driveway, so their cars would park on the side and then up next to the house. And so I got into his car. He had a big old cigar in his mouth. I don't know if he'd ever smoked one before, and his dad had been drinking lots.
Yeah.
Yeah, my father smoked him all the time. And so he let me get behind the wheel and he said, okay, turn it on. I turned away and said, okay, put it in reverse. I did, said, okay, back up. I had never been in a car before I was maybe fourteen, well I don't remember. Could barely reach the pedals, and of course I floor it right into the front of my mother's car. Park it. He doesn't blank, he doesn't say a thing. He said, well, why.
Don't we park it for now?
Why don't we want it for now?
Yeah?
Yeah, because I pulled it up and got it off of my mother's car. Uh. And so that was some of my experiences with the ballplayers. That was like like all of my involvement with sports.
And your dad was was tight with John Ray, wasn't he.
Yeah.
He ended up being really good friends with John Ray. And who was the UK football coach uh in the long string of unsuccessful football coaches that you, uh, except the great ones who we fired like Bear Bryant and Blanton Collier, Don Shula.
We know how to pick him.
We were real talent scounts back then. Uh So yeah,
uh they became good friends. And when John Ray uh left to go to the Buffalo Bills as an assistant coach, my parents would go visit him every so often, and in one of them they took him down to the locker room to meet O. J. Simpson, the father got to meet him before he was also a serial killer, and as a result they you know, they ran into all sorts of athletes, mainly because my father represented Rupp and then the health John Ray, and then helped others which led to different things.
Well, and you know what, and one of my favorite stories about your dad was the fact that people don't realize I've told the story before on the show, but when Joby Hall was the head coach at Saint Louis you for five days, he was upset that Rupp would not anoint him as the future head coach, and so he left. And then and after Joe died, you know the in his obituaries, and Joe told the story every now and then, but what never came out really was how your dad did the legal work to get him
out of the contract. And full disclosure, your folks put me up after I got my first job. I got a job on a Thursday, had to report on a Monday, had zero money, no place to live, so I stayed in your brother Harry's room for about four months, as you will know. But your dad we were eating dinner when he told me the story about how Joe b came in the kitchen and hung his head and said, Harry, I made a terrible mistake. And your dad did the legal work to get him out of his contract, didn't he.
Yeah, yeah, he did. In fact, he drove to Saint Louis with the contract and met with the university officials and got Joe out of it, and so he could come back and be assistant coach for a little while longer, right, and then head coach, which reminds me of a story about Joe's predecessor, Frank Lancaster, wasn't Harry Lancaster, And Harry would tell a story that back in the day when you played places like Alabama, I mean you were in small gyms where the.
Audience was right on top of you.
There was you know, a few thousand and they were boisterous and they would throw things. It was really nasty. And so in one game, Joe and are Adolph and Harry were on the bench in the middle of the game and the fans are throwing stuff at him, and some of.
Them threw money, the coins.
At him, and there was a fifty cent piece on the floor and Harry Lancaster reached over and picked it up, put it in his pocket, and ruff turned to him said, well, I guess they met your price. You know, that was one of the great things about Adolf Rupp if you don't really get that sense now, But he was very clever, very funny, and you know, and although you know he was a tough, mean guy when he was a coach, but he was also hysterically funny and self depreciating in
some cases. There's a story he told about when he would go recruiting back in eastern Kentucky with his driver and he always liked to get stopped into the local barber shop and get his haircut so he could find out what was going on in one of these small towns. He went in and got his hair cut, and then when he was done, he wrote out a check to the to the barber for a dollar or two dollars, whatever it was. He handed the check to him and pointed at his name, and he said, you know who
that is, don't you? Appointment aid offer up And the barber looked at the check and then looked at him. I'm gonna looked at the check again and looked at him and said it had better be you.
I had heard that before. I never knew if it was true or not. But yeah, that's that's one of the I guarantee that sounds exactly like it could be true. John, Thank you so much. My best to you and the wife and your your wonderful daughter and we will talk talk again soon.
Thanks Dave, appreciate it.
John's first book is on Amazon. Watch for the second one soon. Thanks to all my guests, Jim Koutch and Jeff Pcorrel and John Miller. That's it, good night from the garage in Lexington.
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