It is a time for leadership.That could be Joker Phillips’ message to his team in preparation for this Saturday’s game at Mississippi State. The Cats are coming off a disappointing outing against Georgia, they’re beat up physically and most likely a little down mentally, too. Now more than ever, UK needs its leaders to set the tone this week. The Southeastern Conference East dream may be dead, but if Kentucky wins its final four regular-season games, there’s a good chance the Cats will be playing in the Chick-fil-a Bowl or somewhere in Florida on New Year’s Day.Derrick Ramsey attended the UK-Georgia game last week and I can’t think of a better example of a strong leader than “Ram” was for his teams back in the mid-1970s.”I think that for any team to be successful, someone has to be a leader and make decisions because there are times where everyone is looking around to see who is going to do what,” Ramsey told tomleachky.com. “On the offensive side, that was always my job and I made damn sure that I knew what we were going to do. Once they believed that you’re going to make things happen, even when the greatest odds are against you, you have a greater tendency to perform. On the other side was Art (Still) and Jerry (Blanton) and Dallas (Owens) in the secondary. We had a plethora of guys that could make things happen for our team.”Eight games into the 1976 season, a Kentucky team that had upset Penn State earlier that year stood at 5-3 after a dismal showing in a road loss to Maryland. Led by Ramsey and company, that UK team stormed home with three straight wins to win the SEC and earn the school’s first bowl bid in 25 years. The next season, the Cats finished 10-1 and ranked sixth nationally at the end of the season.Years later, when I was doing a Friday night radio show with Ramsey, he was still clearly the leader any time some of his former teammates were in town and joined us for the show.At 6-foot-5 and somewhere around 230 pounds (sound like a 1970s version of Cameron Newton?), Ramsey was a star athlete in the Florida community where he grew up. But he learned quickly that his family judged success by more than just his accomplishments in athletics.”In our home, growing up relatively poor, education was always the number one in our home, so our parents told us we had to maintain a minimum 3.0 (grade-point) average to play sports,” said Ramsey, now the athletics director at Coppin State University.One school year, Ramsey had to recite a speech by Julius Caesar and he failed the assignment because he didn’t prepare for it. That led to a “D” on his report card but he changed it to a “B.”  “I lived directly across from the school and my original hometown had a population of 800 people so everybody knew everybody,” Ramsey said. “Ms. McNeill (his teacher in that class) came to my home and told my mother (about the grade). She said, ‘No, you gave him a B,’ and Ms. McNeill said, ‘No, he may have came home with a B but I gave him a D.’ “Ramsey, a first-team All-SEC player at UK and 10-year NFL veteran, didn’t get away with it.”I was in basketball practice and was bragging to my friends that I was going to take them to a state championship as I had to the football team,” Ramsey said. “Then about that time, my mother had burst into the gym. I looked around and my teammates said, ‘Hey D, your mom is over there.’ She called me to the side and said, ‘Coach, Derrick is a dumb guy and you do not want dumb players on your team, so until he gets his grades together he will not be playing basketball. Get your stuff.’ For the remainder of that semester, all I could do is go to school, work around the house and I learned a valuable lesson. That is why I am here to today, because I value education.”Ramsey said he passes those kinds of messages along to the athletes he oversees now at CSU, almost all of whom will not play their sport professionally.”I was very fortunate that all the lights shined on me at the right time and God put his hand on me at the right time,” Ramsey said. “What I talk to my athletes about is what happens next. You don’t come in here and take a short nap and another nap and then you are done. Another thing I tell them is that now that we have almost 10 percent unemployment. When you and I were coming out, all you needed was a degree (to get a job) and now, even with a degree, it doesn’t matter and you have to see if they have a 3.0 or 3.5 or have any other emphasis.”It is more competitive. The guys that I played (at UK) were serious and were out there working. In Kentucky, we would workout at 3:30 in the afternoon and it’s 99 degrees in July and August. While other people were inside in air conditioning, drinking Kool-Aid or pop, we were out there working. If you take the same tenacity and apply it to life, you will be hard to beat. That is the message I try to tell them, to be competitive in the workplace and as citizens.”