Other than Michigan St. @ Purdue tonight (and really, who wants to watch that?), the games tonight are quite pedestrian.  So piggybacking a report from SportsbyBROOKS yesterday (via Deadspin) that the root of the frosty relations between Kentucky capo Billy Gillispie and ESPN sideline reporter Jeannine Edwards goes back to her refusal to enjoy consensual carnal relations with go out with him, we feel compelled to comment on such a weighty matter.

(photo credit: sportsbyBrooks)

You may recall our first inkling of their tiff on January 27 when UK played at Ole Miss.  Gillispie was unhappy with his team and thought Edwards’ question was particularly bad, so he told her so. 

Then last week during the UK-Florida game at Rupp, Gillispie seemingly mocked Edwards as he pretended to not hear her question before telling her that she “would know better than” him when it came to, you know, basketball…  stuff.  We even wrote at the time that maybe there was more to his condescension than met the eye. 

So what’s the story here?  The easy answer is that, yeah, Gillispie is peeved that Edwards denied his amorous advances, but as any female aged 18-50 who lives in the Lexington area knows, Billy Clyde isn’t exactly the kind of chap who takes the word “no” to heart.  And that of course assumes he can even remember it.  No, Gillispie has beef with Edwards, but that’s probably because he’s a chauvanist men’s basketball coach who doesn’t respect her position rather than any particular incident involving dating her.  Come on, ladies of Lexington… you gals who frequent Harry’s after games and have fallen into the Gillispie Fly Trap – feel free to chime in here. 

Nevertheless, sideshows sell and so we come to tonight’s UK @ Vanderbilt Jodie Meeks game, and guess who is scheduled to once again be the sideline reporter?  Yep, Ms. Jeannine Edwards.   Is there any question that ESPN’s halftime interview split ratings will be the highest of any game all season long? 

Of course, if Vandy somehow does something interesting for the first time in the history of that school, maybe ESPN will avoid this whole sordid mess by interviewing Kevin Stallings instead.  Wouldn’t that be rich?

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 2:59 pm by rtmsf and is filed under media matters. Tagged: billy gillispie, espn reporters, jeannine edwards, kentucky, media matters, vanderbilt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.