Coach of the Year

As many of you probably already know, Billy Gillespie of Kentucky and Bruce Pearl of Tennessee were voted as co-coaches of the year in the Southeastern Conference by the coaches themselves. To most of the people in the dixie, this has been met with a chorus of yawns and a startled, "Huh, what, is it football season yet?". However, in the state of Tennessee, the people are going apeshit.

Bloggers, reporters and just general cro-magnons with access to computers are flaming everyone and everything by screaming that Bruce Pearl was absolutely jobbed by having to share the award with Billy Gillespie. Their argument seems to be that his team won the conference, was ranked no. 1 for one week this year and the team is the most successful (so far) that it has ever been (that didn't take much to accomplish either by the way). Furthermore, his not winning the award outright just goes to prove that the other coaches are envious of him and do not like him.

To these people I would say this, "Are you on crack? Is the sky blue in your world or is it some funky shady of neon to you?". Look, I like Coach Pearl. I think that he is fun, energetic and good for college basketball and I hope that he stays at Tennessee for quite a while. But really, c'mon now, this is just a little too much. He had the most talent in the conference coming into the season and he did exactly what everyone expected him to do, win. Tennessee did not win overwhelmingly, but they did win the conference by what, one game? I think that he did a very good job as it is difficult to get a team to win when it should, but that is nothing like what Gillespie had to do. He had the leftovers from a team that hadn't finished with ten conference wins in two years nor had been in the top two of the SEC east in that long as well. In fact, you would have to go back four years to find a Kentucky team that won 12 games in the SEC. He did this with talent that encouraged Tubby Smith to leave for Minnesota and one freshman (albeit a great one) that he persuaded to come to Kentucky over Florida and Duke. What he accomplished in the conference was much more difficult to do that what Pearl did. As for the other coaches not liking Pearl, well, the must like him more than Billy Donovan of Florida as this is Pearl's second top coach award and Billy (he of the last two national championships) has not won it yet.

I, agree that there was a theft in the coach of the year award in the SEC this year. I just disagree with all of the Tennessee fans as I think that the other coach got jobbed.