Jerry Tipton: “You could just walk into the Kentucky coach’s office.”

Press Box Access: A Sports History Podcast

We welcome back Jerry Tipton to Press Box Access to share stories from his new book: “Déjà Blue—A Sportswriter Reflects on 41 Seasons of Kentucky Basketball.” He takes us behind the scenes with the Wildcats, as he did with his fair, objective and relentless reporting during four decades on the pressure-packed beat. Rick Pitino. Tubby Smith. John Calipari. Eddie Sutton. The Mardi Gras Miracle. Players who thrived in the spotlight. SEC coaches who were characters and Kentucky foils. And there’s more about the Laettner shot, which Jerry detailed in our first episode with him on Aug. 17, 2022: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/press-box-access/jerry-tipton-every-once-in-a-while-you-feel-like-youre-witnessing-history#episodeContent

Tipton served as the Kentucky basketball beat reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader from 1981 until his retirement in July 2022. In that time, he covered three national championship teams (’96, ’98, ’12), nine Final Four teams, six head coaches – Joe Hall, Sutton, Pitino, Smith, Billy Gillispie, Calipari – and more than 1,200 games played by the Wildcats. He also covered the university’s football team for six years before turning exclusively to basketball in 1987. A Lexington website once listed the Top 100 Most Influential People in University of Kentucky Sports History and ranked Tipton at No. 74. He has been enshrined in the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, and the Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communication Hall of Fame. He was the 2018 winner of the Tom Hammond Kentucky Sports Media Award.

Tipton also worked eight years for the Huntington (W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch from 1973-81. There, he was the beat reporter on Marshall University basketball for two seasons, covered Ohio and West Virginia high school sports, and wrote a Sunday column about bowling. The native of Hamtramck, Michigan earned a journalism degree from Marshall University after first studying math in college.

“Déjà Blue—A Sportswriter Reflects on 41 Seasons of Kentucky Basketball,” is scheduled to be released in late April. You can order Jerry’s book online at https://www.acclaimpress.com/books/deja-blue/

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