ESPN's GameDay is coming to town

ESPN's GameDay is coming to town

Broadcast brings buzz, but no Knight
By Jerry Tipton / Herald-Leader Staff Writer

Hall of Fame coach and John Calipari critic Bob Knight won't be at Kentucky's game against Tennessee next Saturday. But many other ESPN staffers will be there as the GameDay crew comes to Lexington for a third time.

Earlier this year, Knight questioned how Kentucky could hire Calipari after two of the coach's former teams had been ordered to vacate Final Four appearances. Knight also questioned players who spend only one year in college, a staple of Calipari's success at Memphis (Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans) and presumably at UK (John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins).

Knight will be working games two days before (Michigan at Minnesota) and two days after (Kansas at Texas A&M) Kentucky plays Tennessee on Saturday night. So the logistics would be difficult, not to mention the potential awkwardness between Knight and Calipari.

No fewer than seven other on-camera personalities will be in Lexington. Dan Shulman, Dick Vitale and Erin Andrews will call the UK-Tennessee game.

The GameDay crew will include Rece Davis, Jay Bilas, Hubert Davis and Digger Phelps.

UK distributed more than 23,000 tickets for the 11 a.m. GameDay telecast, prompting talk of a so-called record crowd.

ESPN doesn't keep crowd-size statistics but acknowledges that 23,000-plus would be the most to watch a GameDay telecast. That number could be topped two weeks later when GameDay originates from the Carrier Dome in conjunction with the Villanova-Syracuse game.

After being at UK, ESPN has plans for GameDay telecasts at Washington (against UCLA), Syracuse and Duke (against North Carolina).

So far this season, GameDay has been at Clemson, Kansas State and Illinois, plus at Connecticut for the women's game.

Next Saturday's game marks the third time GameDay has originated from Lexington. The earlier two were games against Florida in 2005 and 2007. Kentucky was also part of a GameDay telecast for games at Florida in 2006 and 2008.

No official word yet, but it's expected that Kentucky will unveil new uniforms for the Tennessee game. Rumor has it that black trim distinguishes the new uniforms.

Lost weekend

Many sportswriters were noticeably absent from Southeastern Conference games last weekend. Even with ESPN's coverage meaning literally billions of dollars and national exposure to SEC basketball, the league can't welcome lapses in newspaper stories.

Here's a rundown on the print coverage for visiting teams in Saturday games:

Vanderbilt at Kentucky — An ice and snow storm hit Nashville the day before the game, which caused Vandy beat writers to stay home.

Georgia at South Carolina — For a second straight season, no media corps travels with Georgia. This surprising development includes the Atlanta Journal Constitution not assigning a regular writer to cover home games. A patchwork of random staffers and freelancers handles that duty.

Columbia is less than a three-hour drive from Athens, yet no writers that cover Georgia made the trip. Meanwhile, writers were assigned to travel a similar distance to cover a high school football prospect's announcement of his college choice.

LSU at Mississippi State — Free lancers covered LSU's game in Starkville.

Alabama at Auburn — Sanity (or is that nostaglia?) prevailed in this game. Writers from the Montgomery Advertiser, Tuscaloosa News, Mobile Press-Register, Birmingham News and Crimson White covered the action. The Birmingham News sent four staffers.

One man, one vote

Although Kentucky lost at South Carolina the previous week, UK received one first-place vote in The Associated Press poll last week. It came from sportswriter Craig Stouffer of The Washington Examiner. That's Washington, D.C.

Stouffer covers Georgetown. He's also covered college basketball in the Washington, D.C., area for the last four years, the Washington Wizards and soccer.

When asked why he made Kentucky No. 1, Stouffer explained via e-mail.

"I had dropped Kansas and Texas each from No. 1 when they suffered their first losses, which I think was justified given remaining undefeated teams, like Kentucky, at that point," he wrote. "But after this week, I didn't feel that Kentucky losing a tough conference road game against a good team that was buoyed by a singular performance from Devan Downey merited a drop. They also rebounded with a solid victory over Vanderbilt. All things being equal right now, Kentucky is my title favorite.

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