DeFriending Coal Pt 1: UNC@ UK Expectations are Electrifying

Look, I hate Facebook. It’s a disease that has set upon the world worse than the bacteria that currently resides upon my lungs and upper respiratory system.

Facebook is that siren wooing your ship into her rocky, shallow waters so you crash upon the shores and she feast upon your flesh… well, maybe it’s not that bad, but the picture of my displeasure has been painted. It is bad.

Sure, there are many things that are right in the world of Facebook if used appropriately – sending invitations to parties, its cheaper than sending birthday cards, it reminds me to wish someone a happy birthday, and it easily allows you to stay in contact with those you love… and then on the flip side, it allows those that you don’t love to stay in contact with you.

Look, I was once a Facebook member years ago (3 years next week – an anniversary I remember better than any attached to past girlfriends). You are still friended by people you don’t like and you still have to decide wether you want to be their ‘friend’ or if you want to somehow ignore their request or deny it. If you’re polite or simply enamored in the amount of people willing to call you their dear acquaintance, you accept only to find yourself months later wondering who in the heck is the guy with the odd beard, bald head, pipe, and smokers jacket that is trying to IM you. Thus, you defriend him never to respond and never to look back as you go about your merry way. Happy to have forgotten that weird connection you made.

Yes, this is a Kentucky basketball site and your honor, I’m getting there… Somehow over the years Kentucky has made that same weird connection with “Coal” and its friends. The abundant resource in the very state that supplies jobs to thousands of people in the local economy. “Coal”, the most carbon intensive of fossil fuels, responsible for the destruction of mountain tops, the stripping of the Kentucky hillside, the production of thousands of pounds of waste, and the supply of an exorbitant amount of cheap electricity… has friended Kentucky.

The beginning of the end to that friendship starts tomorrow at the hands of John Calipari and Roy Williams.

Sure, it wont be official in their relationship status, but the game tomorrow can be a status symbol of its own. Sure, Cal doesn’t know it but Ol’Roy Williams hinted to it today with his idea to save some power – the very thing Coal creates – when he said “they could save some power in Rupp Arena and not even have the shot clock this weekend.”

Ol’Roy is right on this one. Kentucky comes into the game tomorrow scoring 83.7 points a game (15th in the country) and Carolina 84.0 (#14). The Cats and Tar Heels will run and gun faster than Yosemite Sam and should be shooting the lights out in Rupp. An energy-saving maneuver to the shot clock and a start to clicking the defriend button, but just a start.

The real defriender of Coal is the buzz about the game. The game is expected to be  electrifying. It’ll cover the floor with 9 potential 1st rounders and loads of talent. So much so that who needs Coal?

So in the most Gone-With-the-Wind-Southern accent I can make, I say, I say, I say – I Declare Tomorrow that Kentucky De-Friends Coal. Unknowingly sure, but it begins nonetheless.