by Paul Jordan
While watching the Lakers/Celtics game, you see all the greatest celebrity fans in Los Angeles. Jack. Leo. Donald. When the series goes to Boston, you can bet Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Tom Brady, and the other celebrity Celtic fans will be mugging it up for the cameras. Probably every team in the NBA has their own legion of celebrity fans waiting for their moment of airtime while cheering on their team.
When you get to the college level, Kentucky pretty much is the pinnacle of celebrity fan hood. You doubt me? Quick, name me one celebrity fan that rocks Kansas’s Allen Fieldhouse like Drake, LeBron, or Ashley does. Yea, did not think you could.
So, I got to thinking. Who is Kentucky’s number one celebrity fan. Is it a tried and true loyal standby like Ashley Judd? or one of the newcomers that followed John Calipari to Rupp and now proclaim to “Bleed Blue”?. It is an impressive array of celebs that call themselves fans of Kentucky, but we need to find out who numero uno is.
So in the spirit of last July’s Rival’s Tournament, I now introduce the Kentucky Celebrity Tournament. What I came up with is a 10 fan, single elimination tournament as you, the loyal readers of the Wildcat Blue Nation vote on the eventual winner. If you notice there is a play in poll for the 7th and the 8th seedings and we will get into that in a bit more detail in one second.
Another detail of our Tournament Tournament is that the top four seeds belong to tried and true Kentucky fans that have followed the blue and white for a while. I could not in good conscience put LeBron as a top four seed after just one year of rooting for the Blue and White …. so if the King wants to be UK’s biggest celeb fan, he has to earn it. And I do realize that I may have left your favorite celeb fan off the list. It was not to be malicious, but if you want to voice your support for someone else, enter them in the comments and maybe we can work them in later if enough additional contenders.
Today’s poll does feature a “playin” for the eight seed. Without any further adieu, let’s meet today’s combatants and keep in mind, this is all in fun. No wagering.
JOHN DALY
Yea, I did not know that John Daly was a Kentucky fan either. But apparently he is a John Calipari fan, which makes him a Kentucky fan. Apparently Daly and Cal are buddies from when Cal coached at Memphis and Daly, a Razorback fan, tried in vain to get Cal to take the Arkansas job before Pelphery was hired. Now that Calipari is at Kentucky, Daly says he would “bet on” Kentucky winning a title in the next two to three seasons.
There may be a second Kentucky connection for Daly as well. If you do an image search on “Bing” for “John Daly Kentucky”, random pictures of DeMarcus Cousins pop up.
BEN ROETHLISBERGER
Big Ben is another Calipari friend that happens to like Kentucky. we found about Cal and Big Ben’s bromance about a year ago when Cal sent out some blurry pics via Twitter of he and Ben at a Penguins playoff game. Since then, Big Ben has shown up at Rupp Arena and watched a Cats game. There was speculation that Ben was a Kentucky fan even before Calipari so Ben may be more than a Cal hanger on when it comes to UK fandom.
Okay, BBN, you have 48 hours to make your opinion known. Vote in the poll box to the upper right hand corner of the site and we will have a new matchup on Wednesday morning.
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