Pete Thamel catches BIG XII Commish Dan Beebe at the base of Golgotha today:

He added that the conference would not rule out carrying on without a conference football title game; N.C.A.A. rules require 12 members for such a game.

"It would be one less obstacle to getting into the national championship," Beebe said. "I think television value would still be there. I’m not talking about any specific school that would be departing. It would still be an extremely strong conference and player in the national landscape."

Plus, they already have experience dealing with complex divisional tiebreakers! His half-filled cup runneth over. Amen.

No, I didn't actually get fired.

What happened is that I've been asked to join the staff over at Kentucky Sports Radio, and I accepted. I was definitely not unhappy. I do apologize for not posting much, you guys deserve better. (This has been, by far, the most stressful 5 months of my life. Let's just say I've had some family illness capping off a clusterfuck at work.)

While I won't be blogging here, I will comment, make FanPosts & FanShots and stuff. One of the things that drew me to ASoB is that you guys are the best Wildcat Fan community. I mean, civil discussion and respectful treatment of rivals, on the Internet? That's amazing.

So I'm not going away, but I'm just jumping back to being a regular reader. You thought you could get rid of me that easily? :)

As the South Carolina/Vanderbilt game wraps up, I figured I'd put out a Game Thread for those of you who want to comment along with the crucial rematch with the Crimson Tide. I'll be listening along with the audio stream, but you may want to watch it on the boobtube. (Remember, my fellow Lexingtonians, that tonight's game will be shown on Fox Sports Network, and not on the Insight channel 17.)

Updated 12:22 AM Saturday: Revenge is a dish best served cold, and it is very cold in Hoover. Kentucky gets spanked 13-4. Kentucky's pitchers got very little help from the defense, which committed several costly errors. Just a bad night for the Wildcats, which ends their SEC Tournament experience this year.

Let's hope the Wildcats can smooth out these problems before the NCAA Tournament.

What you see before you is the most dangerous foe the Wildcats will be facing tonight: the Ole Miss Diamond Girls. After one very late night in Alabama, will our Big Blue Heroes have the fortitude to keep their eyes on the ball? Will the Oxford Sirens sing a spell so powerful that it causes Collin Cowgill to start chasing butterflies in the outfield?

Tune in tonight, Wildcat Fanatics! The game is scheduled to start at 8PM Central/9PM Eastern, but expect the start time to be pushed back. You can watch the game on the CSS cable channel, if you happen to have it. (Those of us who live in the Mecca that is Lexington -- Lexxa? -- can see the CSS broadcast on Insight cable channel 17.) You can listen to an audio streaming broadcast and get live stats at secsports.com, or you can see the ukathletics.com story for more broadcast info.

One note that might have slipped through the cracks today: Cowgill and Sawyer Carroll have been named semifinalists for the national Golden Spikes award. The semifinalists consist of the top 50 collegian baseball players according to USA Baseball. This award nomination along with the other nominations for Cowgill and Carroll highlight how special these two players are, and the remarkable change that Coach John Cohen and his staff has made to UK Baseball.

If you can make it, join your fellow ASoB'ers for some live chatting during the game in the comments.

And I know you all have already clicked on that picture above. Twice. You weak-willed sinners!

Hey, anybody awake? Now that I've gotten my ha-ha's out of the way, I'm catching up with our wonderful Baseball Wildcats. With a late, late start, the Wildcats are currently battling the Crimson Tide in the SEC Tournament. (Get your live stats here!) At the time of this post, 'Bama leads 3 to 2 at the end of the 2nd inning. The Wildcats are the designated home team this game.

If I'm still awake, I'll update this post with the final score. Else, I'll let Tru or Ken clean up the mess in the morning.

Update 3AM Thursday: Kentucky brings the pain, and wins 9 to 3. In his first start of the year, Kentucky pitcher Aaron Lovett gets the complete game, with 3 ER, 8 hits, 2 walks and an amazing 12 strikeouts.

Our victorious team will be facing Ole Miss tomorrow -- er, I mean TODAY -- at 8PM. Well, roughly 8PM. Today's game was supposed to start at 8PM, but was pushed back to 10:45.

After a 9-0 drubbing of Ole Miss, our Battling Bat Cats have fought their way into the SEC Tournament. Placing third in the SEC East -- where (I believe) 4 of the 6 teams have been in the top-25 this year -- is an incredible feat.

If you're in Lex, you can see the Wildcat baseball team in their final game of the season on Saturday at 1PM at Cliff Hagan Field. Ramel Bradley will be throwing out the first pitch.

In case you haven't noticed, there are tons more doodads and whatchamacallits here at A Sea of Blue. I know that the post conversion FanPost was a bit much to read. I wanted to take a moment and highlight some of the cool things for the ASoB community to use.

You have to try out these FanShots. These are videos, images, links or other things that you'd like to share with the ASoB readership. These are great if you want to share a story that you read, or something else that isn't very wordy and worthy of a FanPost. (Of course, feel free to comment with breaking news in the most-recent story like before. FanShots don't replace what we've done in the past.) You fan find the FanShots in the grey toolbar just below the top of the page, or look in the right-hand column for the FanShot box (as pictured, left).

Sharing a YouTube video can be a little confusing. It took me a few seconds to figure out what you need to do. On your YouTube video page (example video), look for the light gray box immediately to the right of the video. There should be an "Embed" text field, which contains the proper HTML code to embed the video into a web site. Copy that into your clipboard, and then paste that into the "HTML Embed" field in the FanShot.

Also, the Recommendation system looks to be really cool. If you really like somebody's FanPost (formerly the Diaries) or FanShot, you can recommend it so that it stays at the top of the list for a while. Now you too can be popular!

UPDATE 05/10 9:26:  Just a quick note -- please don't use FanPosts or FanShots to post any copyrighted photos or other copyrighted media.

Mike hasn't said anything about this, yet. But the SBNation of blogs are upgrading to utilize a new platform. Everything is flashier, more robust (love those FanShots!) and shiny. If you want a preview, go look at A Sea of Blue, and replace all the blue with red in your mind's eye.

Do not fear the change, for it is good.

And for the love of God, folks; get your Big East people to create some SBNation blogs! You guys had the best basketball conference this year, and only Card Chronicle was here to document it.

Since Tru loves his hometown Cardinals just slightly less than the Wildcats^*, I thought I'd throw out a few tidbits concerning our beloved rivals:

• Louisville hosts our Kentucky Wildcats today at 6PM. The Herald-Leader reports that the game won't be shown on TV, so you'll need to to default to UK's Internet Audio stream, 630AM WLAP in Lexington, or Louisville's Internet game tracker. The Wildcats beat Louisville earlier in the year 7 runs to 6, so you know the Cards will be looking to split the series.
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• Louisville's basketball team has taken the curious step of scheduling Tubby Smith's Minnesota basketball team next season. Pitino has only won twice against Tubby's Wildcat squad. Given Pitino's talent that is returning -- didja hear Earl Clark opted not to jump into the NBA Draft? -- Tubby will have his hands full.

I steal all my Louisville news from the most excellent Card Chronicle; I recommend the same to you, good readers.

Finally, a point of discussion for you Wildcat faithful. From all accounts, the new Barnstorming Event is going along swimmingly. From what little I've gathered, Louisville doesn't offer the same kind of fare-the-well tour for its basketball seniors. Which is kinda sad; who wouldn't want to boo David Padgett one last time, for old times sake?

Would it be too much to ask to try and schedule a Barnstorming event that included the UL players? You could have it held in Louisville, and have the old foes battle back and forth for a half. Then bring in the regional all-stars and combine the UK and UL teams. (Now that's a scary thought, huh?)

And why limit it to just Louisville players? How about bringing in Courtney Lee and the rest of the great WKU seniors for a stop near Bowling Green? That would make each event unique for the region and promote the state of Kentucky as the state that loves basketball. I think the Barnstorming basketball spotlight is big enough to share with all our in-state players. What do you think? (Share in the comments, of course!)

^*This statement is somewhat false. Tru does not love the Cardinals teams, insomuch as he loves Rick Pitino^**.

^**Tru was lying in this article. He has a full cardboard cutout of Ricky P standing by his bedside. I've seen it with my own eyes.

With the football Blue-White game being today, it would be remiss to let the baseball Wildcats' efforts go by unrecognized.

Last night the Bat Cats pulled out a gritty 11-7 victory against the #24-ranked Florida Gators. Leading 6 to 5 in the top of the 7th, Florida's center-fielder Matt den Dekker hit a 2-run homer to put the Gators in front. But in the bottom of the 8th, the Wildcats got busy, scoring 5 runs to take control of the game.

Special credit to Senior relief pitcher Andrew Albers, who pitched the final 4 innings, allowing 2 runs (1 earned run) on 2 hits. Andrews cool and strong presence on the mound allowed the Wildcats offense the time to get rolling. And roll they did, all night long: Sawyer Carroll earned 5 RBI's on 3-for-5 batting and a home run. Collin Cowgill reached base on all 5 batting attempts (2-2 batting, 2 walks and HBP). Shortstop Chris Wade made his only hit count, scoring the final 2 runs of the game.

The Wildcats are now 29-8, with all 8 losses coming against SEC Opponents. After getting swept by #9 Georgia last weekend, the Wildcats have something to prove against the Gators. Taking the series against the Gators will start the climb up the stacked SEC East.

If you're not going to the Blue-White game today, you might want to take up today's matchup against the Gators at Cliff Hagan. First pitch is at 7PM.

Update [2008-4-20 23:11:49 by Truzenzuzex]:  YES! Cats claim the series victory over the Gators!  Woooohooo!  That one really helps our cause.