Kentucky Wildcats Basketball : A Blue Blood Tradition In A Modern World
By Paul Jordan
If you ask the average Kentucky fan, they can tell you the time and the place they saw or heard their first game, their last game, and every really big game in between. Catch an older fan and they can regale you with tales of yesteryear and when the Baron Of The Bluegrass patrolled the sidelines. If I had a dime for every time I heard my father say, “That’s not how Old Man Rupp would have done it” I would be able to pay off the National Debt with a little left over for dinner at Tavern On The Green. In my youth Joe B. Hall had to deal with working in the shadow of the Baron, and the Kentucky Faithful breathing down his neck every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. Joe’s rolled up program gave way to Eddie Sutton and his curly hair, and a fondness for the afternoon aparatif, which brought us to the world of Rick Pitino, and so on and so on all the way to where we stand today. On the brink of title #8. With the whole world watching, just waiting for a sign of weakness, a sign of some NCAA violation, no matter how slight, something they can hang their hat on to keep the tradition that is Kentucky Basketball from obtaining their goal. Kentucky Basketball and John Calipari were the perfect marriage. We put two of the biggest targets in the world of college basketball together and created a behemoth.
You see, John Calipari can win 20 NCAA titles and put 150 players in the NBA on the all-star team and he will still be a second class citizen to those out there who have neither the intelligence, nor the aptitude to try and understand him or what he does. And the same stands true for the Kentucky Wildcats. If we win the NCAA every year from now until the next millenium, we will still be a bunch of uncooth barbarians who thumb their noses at what is really important, image. We will never be accepted as the true Best of The Best, because there will always be some guy out there who claims we broke the rules to get there, or we stole a recruit from someone, or we play in the wrong conference, anything to deny us the place we have earned over the last 60+ years of beating the best, being the best, and ruling the world of college basketball time and time again. So you know what? Hang ’em. Forget ’em. To Blazes with the lot of them. Because we are going to do it anyway.
This weekend the Kentucky Wildcats are going to win two more games and sit once again atop the mountain that is the NCAA Tournament, and we will once more hoist that trophy in the air, and give John Calipari what he has been seeking his whole life as a coach, redemption. Not in the eyes of the media, although they will be willing to hop on the bandwagon. Not in the eyes of the world of Collegiate fans out there, because the contempt they hold for us is on such a scale that you could use it to weigh whales.
So you know what world, we are going to win anyway, and we are going to do it the right way, and then we are going to enjoy it as you slowly come to the realization that Calipari is right, Kentucky Basketball is back, and everyone else is playing for second place. Arrogant, you say? You better believe it. You see after 60+ years, we have earned a little arrogance. We have fought our way back to the top and we are staying there. So UCONN, Butler, VCU, please pardon us for the shade, because this One Shining Moment belongs to the Kentucky Wildcats. And we are not going to give it up for anyone
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