The complete Earl Cox review from the Voice Tribune

The complete Earl Cox review from the Voice Tribune, August 28, 2007

Here’s a UK football story that may be hard to believe
If I hadn’t lived through the University of Kentucky’s shameful Thin Thirty Days, I would swear that a new book, “The Thin Thirty,” is a work of fiction. But you couldn’t make up what a Louisville author, Shannon Ragland, has written about the shameful period when Charlie Bradshaw coached UK and so brutalized the UK football players that all but 30 quit the team.

Shortly after Bradshaw returned to Lexington to coach his alma mater, I had a conversation with him in front of the Wildcat Bowling Lanes next to Memorial Coliseum. He said that Dr. Ralph Angelucci, the team physician and a member of the UK trustees, told him that the first thing the coach had to do was run off the gays, including actor Rock Hudson, who were dating some of the football players.

You read that right.

Can’t win with mules
And Bradshaw went to work. He ran off the homosexuals. The party sites switched to Richmond and involved some of the Eastern players. Hudson helped one of the EKU players, Harvey Yeary, make it big in Hollywood with a new name: Lee Majors!

But Bradshaw also ran off most of his UK football players. All but 30 – thus The Thin Thirty.

I think it was a high school coach named Jim Pickens who told Bradshaw that he had run off the thoroughbreds and was left with mules – “and you can’t win on Saturdays with mules.” He also told him that Bradshaw shouldn‘t ever bother to recruit Bowling Green players again because he had run off Dale Lindsey, probably the best player Bowling Green had ever produced. Lindsay finished at WKU and was a star linebacker in the NFL.

Bear Bryant Jr.
I walked with Bradshaw one day from the Coliseum across the Avenue of Champions to Stoll Field. I told him I was worried about him and I thought what was wrong with him was that he was trying to be someone else – Bear Bryant Jr.

He objected violently to that.

That first season I flew on the UK team plane to a game with the University of Detroit. I have never seen such a beaten-down group of individuals.
Actually there were only 29 on the trip. I was the last one on the plane and I couldn’t see an empty seat. But Junior Hawthorne, a big tackle, made his teammates squinch up in the back to make room for me.

Homer Rice, a friend who turned Fort Thomas Highlands into a football powerhouse, was a mild-mannered man who was a Bradshaw assistant. He called one day at The Courier-Journal. He said things were so bad that he had told Bradshaw that he would quit if the mistreatment of players didn’t stop.

Rice stayed.

Gambling on Xavier?
Earl Ruby, the legendary Courier-Journal sports editor, and I flew on the team plane to Knoxville for the season-ending Kentucky-Tennessee game in 1962. UK won 12-10 and the Wildcats finished the season 3-5-2. Bradshaw lasted six more seasons before he was replaced by the luckless John Ray, who did make a major contribution to UK by being the catalyst for the building of Commonwealth Stadium.

In addition to the sex, Shannon Ragland discovered something I had never heard. He writes that some of the Wildcats tried to throw the Xavier game (the week before Tennessee). Xavier upset the Cats 14-9.

Ragland has done thorough research. I told him that his book could be a good textbook for use by colleges. It should be required for football players planning to be coaches.

Ragland played in two state tournaments as a member of the Eastern High team led by Felton Spencer. He is a graduate of WKU and also of UK’s law school.