CitizenBBN

For those who may not know, UK is very lucky to have Rod Strickland on it's basketball staff. Rod had a distinguished and incredibly long career in the NBA as a point guard, playing from 1998 to 2005, scoring over 14,000 points with an average of 13.2 ppg and 7.3 apg. Clearly, a highly qualified expert on playing basketball in general and the point guard in particular.

Rod now works in an administrative role at UK, and as such cannot instruct the players. UK had a single secondary violation in all of 2011-12 in men's basketball, when a player had the crazy idea to ask Rod a question about something on a film when Cal was tied up.

A minor violation, and frankly another example of the completely twisted thinking of the NCAA. This is a violation, but a Department Chair clearly coordinating for years with UNC athletics to keep players eligible, going so far as to forge professor's signatures to assign grades for classes that never existed, is apparently not a NCAA issue but simply a matter of academic policy for UNC.

UK fans, UK Administration, Cal, Rod, I have a suggestion. Don't get mad about the blatant unfairness, the hypocrisy, the laughable behavior of the NCAA. Don't be angry that UNC has more political juice than UK and is thus granted the collegiate equivalent of favored nation status.

Don't get mad. Rather do what Cal does so well and turn lemons into lemonade.

Rod needs to not only be in and administrative role at UKAA, he needs to be made adjunct professor at the University. Sports Marketing may be a good choice, but any number of areas could work.

Then, as a professor. Rod offers various non-lecture format classes, with small class sizes of two or three, to teach principles of basketball and point guard play. We will insure that this is NOT simply a way to circumvent the rules and allow Rod to work directly with players b/c after all President Emmert, in that class of 3 people only 2 of them were UK basketball players. the other was just a regular student who wanted to learn about basketball.

Just like UNC, where having 1/3rd of the students in the bogus classes is some kind of impenetrable shield against NCAA involvement, we will have classes with regular non-scholarship students as well as players who just happen to be point guards on the men's basketball team.

Of course like at UNC (as documented by Pepper's released transcript) these students will do surprisingly well in these classes, garnering the As and Bs necessary to stay eligible and meet APR requirements for class hours.

So, a win/win scenario. UK adds a diverse study program to its academic resume, and Rod Strickland enjoys a post-NBA career as a professor. The fact that UK's point guards will benefit greatly in both their instruction in the game and in their ability to remain eligible with little expenditure of time on academics is mere coincidence.

We know it's just coincidence b/c, after all, there are non-athletes in the classes as well.

Don't get mad. Get even.