If you want to know something about me, here is my brief biography (nothing real exciting....just boring stuff).

(Updated August 2008)
Jamie H. Vaught is in his 18th year at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro where he is a professor of Business Administration and Accounting. He is also a faculty advisor for the campus newspaper, The Southeasterner. Before he came to SKCTC in 1991, he taught at St. Catharine College for three years and Sue Bennett College for two years. He formerly worked in Jake Butcher's now-defunct large banking empire, which was composed of numerous banks in Tennessee and Kentucky (including Knoxville, Chattanooga, Lexington and Somerset). He served as an internal auditor at the Somerset location (now called First & Farmers Bank) for four years, including one year as the head auditor.

A graduate of UK with bachelor’s degree in accounting and master’s degree in business administration, Vaught is a well-respected authority on UK basketball. During his college days, he served as sports editor of UK's daily student newspaper, Kentucky Kernel, covering the Wildcats on a regular basis. The Pulaski County native also has written four best-selling books -- Crazy About The Cats: From Rupp to Pitino(1991), Still Crazy About The Cats (1995), Cats Up Close: Champions of Kentucky Basketball (1998), and Krazy About Kentucky: Big Blue Hoops (2003).

A former sports columnist for The Cats’ Pause weekly in Lexington where he worked for 13 years, Vaught is currently sports columnist for The Daily News in Middlesboro and other Kentucky newspapers. He also has written articles for Kentucky Monthly magazine in recent years. He also worked for the daily Commonwealth Journal in Somerset for seven years as sports columnist and photographer. Vaught, whose articles have appeared in The Cats’ Pause Kentucky Basketball Yearbook, was also a contributing photographer for Lindy’s SEC Football Annual in Birmingham, Ala., for several years. For his past literary efforts, he has been profiled several times on WKYT-TV (Channel 27) and WLEX-TV (Channel 18), both in Lexington, and featured in many newspapers, including Louisville’s Courier-Journal.

In recent years, Vaught’s published works have been cited in eight books about UK basketball with his observations or comments from his previous books. The books that have featured Vaught’s works include And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Kentucky, Texas Western, and the Game That Changed American Sport by Frank Fitzpatrick (Simon & Shuster), and Mind Games: Phil Jackson’s Long Strange Journey, a biography of the NBA coach by Roland Lazenby (McGraw-Hill).

In 1982, Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. appointed Vaught, who is severely hard of hearing, for a three-year term to the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired, a governmental agency based in Frankfort. He was instrumental in the early development of KET’s 11 p.m. Captioned News. Vaught also was named the Outstanding Jaycee of the Year by Somerset-Pulaski County Jaycees in the early 1980s. Vaught also was named as one of “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes” in a 2008 book by Lexington writer Steve Flairty.

In his spare time, Vaught enjoys sports, presidential history, traveling, writing, reading biographies, photography, and shopping for bargain items. While Vaught still keeps his church membership at Somerset's First Baptist Church, he attends St. Julian Church in Middlesboro. Vaught and his wife, Deanna, live in Middlesboro with their daughter, Janna, 6, and their son, Warren, 4.

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