It's all about expectations

If Texas A&M makes the NCAA basketball tournament, it's something to celebrate in College Station. Making the field of 64 is something that is not a given at the beginning of every Aggie season. So when the Aggies do well, as they have the last four seasons or so, accolades are accorded to the Aggies basketball coach.

It's an entirely different situation at Kentucky, where the question is not whether the Wildcats will make the tourney, but will they win it. There are seven national championship banners hanging from the rafters at Kentucky's Rupp Arena.

I really don't think Billy Gillespie knew what he was getting into two years ago when he left A&M to succeed Tubby Smith to assume the position of being the most prominent state official in the state of Kentucky. That's right -- I'm convinced twice as many people in Kentucky can name the state school's basketball coach as can name the state's governor and four times as many people have an opinion on the coach's performance than they do on the job the governor is doing.

When it was announced today that Kentucky had fired Gillespie after two seasons, Kentucky's athletic director Mitch Barnhart was quoted as saying Gillespie "spoke to things that were not in his job description, just about winning and losing and improving. This program is bigger than that. There's much more to it than that."

Get the picture? I'm betting that at A&M and most other schools in the nation, all the head basketball coach needs to worry about is "winning and losing and improving." I'm also betting that Gillespie thought that was all he needed to worry about at Kentucky. That, more than anything else, proved his undoing. He was doomed before he arrived on campus.