Andy Kennedy Settles Defamation Suit
by FanHouse Newswire
CINCINNATI (AP) -- University of Mississippi basketball coach Andy Kennedy on Tuesday settled a defamation lawsuit with a cab driver and a valet stemming from a dispute over a ride.
Details of the settlement are confidential and no money amounts were specified as attorneys told Judge Melba Marsh in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court that they had reached an agreement.
The cab driver, who had told police Kennedy punched him and used racial slurs after he refused to carry all five members of Kennedy's staff because his taxi had only four seats for passengers, said he was sorry.
"I would like to apologize to Mr. Kennedy and the court for any role I may have played in this unfortunate incident," driver Mohamed Jiddou said in court.
The valet, Michael Strother, who witnessed the altercation, did not issue an apology but accepted Kennedy's apology from 2009.
by Michelle Smith
Amber Gray's basketball career at the University of Tennessee is over.
The Tennessee athletic department announced Tuesday that Gray, who underwent brain surgery last July, will not be cleared by the department's medical staff to continue her basketball career for the Lady Vols.
Gray, an Ohio native, missed the 2009-2010 season after she had surgery to repair a brain aneurysm that had caused her to have a stroke.
Gray's condition became apparent after she underwent surgery for an injured shoulder. It took 12-1/2 hours to repair the broken blood vessel, which had likely been there long before the shoulder injury. The brain surgery saved her life.
She played in 27 games as a freshman in 2008-09, averaging 2.7 points a game off the bench. 
by Clay Travis
SANDESTIN , Fla. -- It's good to be the football king.
The SEC distributed roughly $209 million to its 12 member institutions this season, $17.3 million per team, Commissioner Mike Slive announced at the SEC spring meetings Friday.
The payout represents a 57.7 percent increase over the previous season, due in large part to the league's 15-year deal with ESPN and CBS, worth more than $2 billion. For reference, Slive mentioned that the league's 1980 per-team payout was just $4.1 million. Even more astounding, since its last expansion in 1991, when revenue was just over $20 million, the league has nearly ten timed its distributions.
Another important point is that each SEC school retains its local multimedia packages. Those packages would have been precluded, as they are in the Big Ten, by an SEC Network similar to the Big Ten Network. Slive said that many of them were for substantial sums of money.
Just in time for the long holiday weekend, the seamy side of college basketball's one-and-done community reared it's ugly head on Friday.
The New York Times is reporting that the eligibility of former Kentucky guard Eric Bledsoe is being investigated by the NCAA. According to the Times' report, Bledsoe, who averaged 11.0 points and 3.0 assists before leaving college after his freshman season for the NBA, is under investigation for his academic transcript, living situation, potential rent payment and other unsundry details. Also included is an allegation that Bledsoe's high school coach, Maurice Ford, demanded payment for steering his star player to the school.
"A college coach who recruited Bledsoe said that Ford (Bledsoe's high school coach) explicitly told his coaching staff that he needed a specific amount of money to let Bledsoe sign with that university," the Times reported. "The coach, who did not want to be named out of fear of repercussions when recruiting in Birmingham, said Ford told him and his staff that he was asking for money because he was helping pay rent for Bledsoe and his mother. Ford denied this, saying, 'I don't prostitute my kids.'"
He said he had done nothing wrong, adding: "I'm a poor black man. And when one black man tries to help another black man, there's always something wrong."