UK Football Coach Rich Brooks (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
University of Kentucky’s football coach Rich Brooks, along with Tom Leach, known as the “Voice of the Wildcats,” will be signing their book, Rich Tradition at Joseph-Beth Booksellers on Wednesday night, August 5, 2009, at 7:00 pm. The book tells of the Wildcats’ comeback from that unbelievably pitiful shut-out loss to LSU with a score of 49-0 in 2006.
When Brooks came to Kentucky, the Wildcats’ were hurting with a 9-14 record. Brooks led the team to slowly win more games with a record of 17-30. The football program has suffered more losses than wins since the early 1960s when Blanton Collier was head coach. When the pressure began with all those “Ditch Rich” bumper stickers and heated discussions on talk radio stations, Coach Brooks endured the heat to become “the first coach in Kentucky history to win three straight bowl games,” according to Cory McCartney, a writer for Sports Illustrated stated in this article.
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LeBron James, left, and Coach John Calipari, right
(AP Photo/University of Kentucky, David Coyle)
Rich Brooks is not the only UK coach to face difficulty on the field, or in this case, the court. John Calipari, the new UK Mens’ Basketball coach, will be faced with a host of young men who are learning to play together again after the firing of Coach Billy Gillispie (otherwise known as Billy G.). Coach Cal came to us from the University of Memphis with a 1st place standing with the Tigers for the last four years of his coaching career.
Calipari will be signing his book Bounce Back: Overcoming Setbacks to Succeed in Business and in Life, also at Joseph-Beth Booksellers on Saturday, August 29, 2009, at 6:00 pm. Coach Cal’s book is more or less a trial to triumph novel, having seen his own setbacks during his coaching career. The “playbook” is set to release September 1st of this year according to Amazon.com.
Both teams and both coaches have had their setbacks and their own triumphs. As Joseph-Beth’s website says, “Calipari [and I infer Rich Brooks] has seen the bottom…[but remember,] it's never a matter of how far you have fallen, but instead it's about how high you bounce back.”
For More Information:
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
John Calipari's Bio
The Blanton Collier Sportsmanship Group
Rich Brooks Bio
Tom Leach's Website
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