Big Blue Nation: Show Me Your Papers
By Terry Brown
The University of Kentucky football team lost to the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers in football. The basketball team is coming off a
Aug 31, 2013; Nashville, TN, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops on the sideline against the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers during the first half at LP Field. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
first round exit (in the NIT!). And all the while, the Little Brother Cardinals are having the best athletic season in the history of mankind (or so the Louisville sports media keep telling us. At any rate, while it’s never a bad time to be a Kentucky fan, 2013 has been one of the more trying years in the Big Blue Nation. And what happens when the university’s teams aren’t quite performing as we want them to or wish they would? Simple. Some members of the Big Blue Nation turn on each other.
This phenomenon is very apparent on Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media, but it’s been happening around water coolers and dinner tables since Rupp and Bryant roamed the sidelines. Everyone becomes an expert on coaching decisions from playing time to schemes to player rotations. As if John Calipari forgot how to coach from 2012 to 2013. Or that Mark Stoops, late of Florida State University, is wilting under the spotlight in Lexington. While it’s not against any sort of unwritten rule to have opinions concerning your favorite team, the ferocity with which some people express their opinions and denounce any contrary thoughts is counter productive and gives every member of the Big Blue Nation a bad name.
Every fan is different. Some fans grew up rooting for the Cats from infancy. Some fans have entered the fold later in life. Some fans are graduates of the university and some are not. The most important thing is that we are all fans. We all want the Cats to win and most importantly, do their absolute best in their representation of themselves, their families and the university community.
The only real gripe I have are the sometimes fans. I didn’t think that the Kentucky Wildcats had bandwagon fans because most of my interactions with Cats fans are of the fervent variety. The type of fans that can give you a play by play run down of the 1992 Duke basketball game or can recount every detail of the football’s team victory of eventual national champion LSU in 2007. True fans. Diehard fans. But like every successful program, there are fans that only show up when the Cats win.
Apr 2, 2012; New Orleans, LA, USA; Kentucky Wildcats players rub the head of head coach John Calipari as he holds the NCAA National Championship trophy after defeating the Kansas Jayhawks 67-59 in the finals of the 2012 NCAA men
Conversely, there are the fans that are so pessimistic, every loss means the team is doomed, the coaches can’t coach and the players should have their scholarships revoked. Stoops first game? He’s a bum and UK Football will NEVER be a success. A down year in basketball? Coach Cal can’t recruit and we need to be worried. Both dramatic points of view only emphasize the lack of knowledge that the speaker (or tweeter) has regarding the way things work. Real, and realistic, fans understand that the football job is tough and that, no matter how we wish otherwise, the Men’s Basketball team simply cannot win every game, every year.
If you want to be a true member of the Big Blue Nation, you have to realize that it’s not a sometime thing, but it doesn’t need to be an all consuming thing either. Support the Cats, but reasonable. It’s never OK to call a college kid profane names, especially tweeting right at them. It’s not alright to attack fellow fans because you happen to disagree. Ultimately, we’re all in this Big Blue Nation together, no matter how we got here, and we need to come together. There’s no need to try to “outfan” someone in order to prove what a great fan you are. Cats fans, we’re better than that.