KSR and Cats Illustrated Merge to Create the Ultimate Home for Kentucky Sports Coverage

Today is an exciting day for KSR and the coverage of UK Athletics in general. KSR is happy to announce the merger of longtime UK sports media brand Cats Illustrated with Kentucky Sports Radio.

This is a major development for KSR and the culmination of over 20 years of Kentucky Sports Radio and Cats Illustrated coverage, the two combining to create the ultimate media company for UK fans. For the past 15 years, KSR and Cats Illustrated have been two of the most popular UK sports entities, and now fans can access all the coverage that both have provided on one website.

As part of this merger, Justin Rowland has joined On3 Sports and will bring his writing to KSR+. For the past decade, Justin has been the No. 1 source of UK Football recruiting information, and adding his insight, insider information, and recruiting breakdowns to KSR+ will only solidify KSR as the #1 site for all things UK sports. The Cats Illustrated premium message board, House of Blue, which has been part of the UK community for nearly 20 years, will also be available on KSR+ and remain the primary spot for Justin’s work. He will also still be the Editor of everything published there.

In addition, Jeff Drummond, the longest-tenured UK sports journalist on the internet with a legacy of writing about UK athletics since the mid-90s, will be joining KSR as a House of Blue reporter and the primary UK Baseball reporter for Kentucky Sports Radio’s free website. Jeff is the dean of UK sports on the internet, and the addition of him and Justin makes the KSR team even stronger.

Most everything you enjoy about KSR and Cats Illustrated will not change. Both domain addresses will still be accessible. There will be the free site, KentuckySportsRadio.com, managed by Tyler Thompson, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and is the most trafficked team college sports website in America. If you are a KSR+ subscriber, you will now have access to two message boards: KSBoard, which will include all of the KSR writers and their information, and House of Blue, which will be managed exclusively by Justin Rowland and contain his writings and inside information. Two different message boards with two different styles, each of which will be part of the same subscription. 

UK coverage on the internet dates back to the early ’90s. From the AOL UK forum to Alliance Sports to Wildcat Faithful to Kentucky Sports Report to Wildcat Nation to Cats Pause, Kentucky fans have spent over 30 years online talking about the Cats. On a personal level, I have been a part of these forums since 1999, starting as a message board poster Magloire52 and with KentuckySportsRadio.com in 2005.

Now, after over 30 years, all of these forums exist within the new KSR, with Editor in Chief Tyler Thompson, Drew Franklin, HOB Editor Justin Rowland, Jeff Drummond, Nick Roush, Jack Pilgrim, Adam Luckett, Zack Geoghegan, Jacob Polacheck, Steven Peake, and many other contributors all under one site. Whether you remain a reader of the free forum (which will always remain as the core of KSR) or the KSR+ premium option, you will have more information at your disposal than ever before.

I no longer run KSR or operate it on a day-to-day basis, but I do still own the name and want to make sure the coverage continues the legacy we began. Tyler and Drew have led the site to amazing heights in the last five years, and I couldn’t be more proud of their work in keeping KSR as a dominant force. I am confident that with this move and the addition of Justin and Jeff that KSR is positioned to deliver the most complete coverage of UK sports of all time.