I’ll be heading to football practice shortly to hear what Joker Phillips has to say and talk to a couple players and coaches, but before I do, here are a couple notes and links:

• Some guy named Eric Lindsey wrote an article last night over at CoachCal.com, maybe you’ve heard of him. In all seriousness, the former Mr. Cat Scratches wrote a great piece about junior guard Jon Hood, who recently had surgery to repair a torn ACL. It covers anything you would want to know about the injury from how Hood is handling to how it happened to how his recovery is proceeding. Hood is also extremely honest in the article about his own game, admitting that he was not working had enough last season. Head on over and give it a read.

• Former UK wide receiver Chris Matthews has played with the Cleveland Browns this preseason as an undrafted free agent. He was pretty quiet in the team’s first pair of preseason games, but came on to play the fourth quarter last night. Trailing 24-0, the Browns scored two touchdowns, the second of which was a four-yard pass from Jarrett Brown to Matthews. Hopefully the big wide out can parlay the touchdown into significant playing time in his final preseason game and a chance at a roster spot.

• I talked about it a bit yesterday, but UK Volleyball begins its 2011 season at the Florida State Tournament today at 11:00 a.m. ET against Albany. If you want to keep up with the team via live in-game updates, follow @KentuckyVB, the official Twitter account of UK Volleyball.

• Lastly, UK’s women’s and men’s soccer teams play a rare double header tonight at the UK Soccer Complex. Jon Lipsitz and the UK women try to win their third consecutive game to open the season at 5:00 p.m. ET against the Ohio Bobcats. They will be followed by Ian Collins and the men playing their season-opener against the Dayton Flyers. We will have live blogs of both games beginning about 10 minutes before kickoff.