Kentucky Wildcats: One Fan’s NCAA Tournament Boycott

The Kentucky Wildcat basketball team recently sat out this year’s version of the NCAA tournament. Their invitation getting lost on Selection Sunday and replaced instead with an invite to sit on the side of the dance, in the NIT. An act that forced them to play with the overweight, pimply kids that have an off smell of body odor and Axe body spray, who wait for the techno song to come on before breaking out a traditional ‘can you breakdance’ routine. Yet even the time with the sideline viewing ended early at the hands of one Robert Morris. RMU and the selection committee combining to provide an early end to a long season that began nearly 6 months prior.

As a Kentucky fan this weekend, while the tournament rolled to full force, it wasn’t all bad. You could avoid being forced to make the difficult bracket decisions of choosing the Kentucky Wildcats to top some other Wildcat version (i.e. Villinova, Arizona, or Kansas State); an event you’d like to happen but feel it unlikely to occur.

As a Kentucky fan, with limited – if any – expectations of the underperforming team, you didn’t have to endure another couple of days with hopes of just making the round of 32 and likely losing two days after you began.

As a Kentucky fan this weekend, I wasn’t forced to go out and listen to Louisville or Indiana fans cheer for some team they’ve never likely seen play, let alone care for their win, just because they played my Cats. I had the pleasure of doing it days earlier.

In fact, as a Kentucky fan I was able to boycott the entire tournament thus far. That’s right in all it includes – or better yet excludes:

No Bill Raftery.

No Jay Bilas.

No Clark “Special K” Kellogg.

No obscure team mascots.

No shots of Christian Laettner.

No Duke, Louisville, or Indiana.

No One Shining Moment.

No having to explain what Marshall Henderson’s deal is.

No having to listen to Hoosier call Cody Zeller “Big Handsome”.

No having to look at Cody Zeller.

No office pool.

No bracket, yeah, that’s right, no bracket.

Sitting out the NCAA’s, my most favorite sporting event of the entire calendar, is a hard choice but consider this: you may miss the hot bombshell that you recently broke up with, but do you really stalk her on Facebook, look at her vacation pictures with her new guy, the one that she left you for with the 6 pack abs, chiseled jaw, and arms that are bigger than your legs? Do you go to her favorite bar when she updates her status letting you know where she’s having that happy hour drink and how much she’s enjoying life while you’re at home alone, eating Domino’s for the 5th straight day? No – you pretend she doesn’t exist. You move on and know that your next girl is going to be 10 times hotter and hope that that dude she’s with has herpes.

That’s exactly what’s happening for this Kentucky fan. Avoiding the NCAA’s, allows me to enjoy the next Kentucky team just that much more.

So for those of you watching – the best to you. To those that have joined in the boycott, welcome aboard. It taste bitter, but it’ll be sweet in approximately 8 months and 7 days when Kentucky – and the #1 recruiting class – will play Providence in the Barclay’s Center.