Beech Tree News Network

Troy University coach Neal Brown was an all-state receiver at Boyle County High School who went on to play at Kentucky and then UMass before starting a successful college coaching career.
He was offensive coordinator at UK for two years for Mark Stoops before taking over at Troy three years ago. He’s seen improvements in Kentucky high school football he likes.
“The quality of Kentucky high school football continues to get better. There are more fans that probably come to high school football than basketball games,” Brown said. “But the talent level of Division I prospects being produced in Kentucky is still small compared to Alabama and Georgia.
“The biggest difference between Alabama high school football and Kentucky is the commitment at the administrative level is much higher in Alabama than Kentucky overall. The thing in Kentucky is that when I was out recruiting I was shocked to see the low number of coaches in the school. It’s not like that in Alabama.”
Brown says one common problem for college football teams everywhere is declining attendance for a variety of reasons.
“A lot of fans come to games but just stay in the tailgate area,” Brown said. “We set attendance records at Troy the last two years, but we sell alcohol — and that helps. TV is great but people have some nice setups at their house. You have to do a great job from a marketing standpoint to bring people into the stadium because there are a lot of things that keep fans out of the stadium now.”

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Sports fans in Kentucky lost two well-known, popular media members last week in Bobby Brockman of Campbellsville, age 61, and Wes Strader, 79, of Bowling Green.
Brockman was sports editor for the Central Kentucky News Journal for over 30 years and knew more about Campbellsville University sports than anyone I knew. If you had a question about Campbellsville University, he would have the answer. Same with high school sports questions from the Campbellsville area.
He also did radio work and loved softball — and often coached teams.
We crossed paths a lot during our work careers and he was always great to be around.
Same with Strader, the radio play-by-play voice of the Western Kentucky University football and men’s basketball for 36 years. He did a Kentucky basketball postgame radio call-in show for eight years starting in 2000 while also doing his regular sports talk show in Bowling Green.
During his UK show days, he became friends with former UK All-American Kenny Walker and the two often traveled to games together to do the postgame show. They had a great on-air personality and I loved being a guest on their show.
Strader has a banner with his name hanging at Diddle Arena and is the only non-player or former coach with a banner. He was also inducted into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002 and the first time I actually met him was when he was broadcasting the boys state basketball tournament. He was cut from the same mold as legendary UK radio icon Cawood Ledford. Both were classy and the ultimate professionals.
It’s never easy to say goodbye to friends, but it helps knowing both these men did what they loved for so many years and all both ever wanted to do was bring recognition and share stories about athletes. Neither sought the spotlight but their work was so good and so passionate it was impossible not to notice, and I’m going to miss both of them a lot.