Is Rick Pitino coming to Big Blue Madness?

Rumors have been swirling for weeks that Rick Pitino will be one of the special guests at the Big Blue Madness event this Friday. Pitino is one of the legendary Kentucky coaches who brought the Wildcats a National Championship in 1996. He coached for 8 years at Kentucky from 1989–1997 and helped restore the Wildcats to prominence after the previous head coach, Eddie Sutton, left the program wallowing in recruiting scandals.

After his stint at Kentucky, Pitino went back to the NBA and coached the Boston Celtics for four years. He resigned after struggling with a 102-146 record. He decided to head back to the college ranks and coach for Kentucky's rival, Louisville, where he began to have a different reputation in the eyes of Kentucky fans.

That 1996 National Championship under Pitino had none other than team captain Mark Pope on it, who averaged 7.6 points in 20.3 minutes per game. When Pope thinks back on championship-caliber teams, he thinks of Pitino and that 1996 team. When he dreams of the future, he wants to see more championships just like that. He is eager to return things to the championship caliber year in and year out and he knows that's hard work:

So, will Pitino be at this year's Big Blue Madness? The answer is still a little blurry, but it seems very likely. He tweeted out that he will be at the Kentucky vs. Vanderbilt football game "helping Coach Stoops."

The wink at the end is what gets me. It's a weird time to visit the game the day after Big Blue Madness.

When Coach Pope was asked if Pitino would be there or not, he was a bit coy about it all, but he did say that he was coming to "practice." Do you know what the biggest practice event of the year is? Big Blue Madness, which also happens the day before the game that Pitino will for sure be at.

Stay tuned because there's a change that Pope walks out with Pitino, and the crowd welcomes back one of their own after all the years and even some years on the enemy sideline. But this is how we need to remember him and see him if he's there on Friday: