Conflicted UofL fan

I stumbled upon this article posted on Kentuckysportsradio.com (a diehard UK blog) by a Cardinal fan. It's a little lengthy and I'm not sure that I agree with everything said, but it is very well written, thought provoking, and certainly worth your time to read:

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The Times and Trials of a Conflicted UofL Fan: A Neighboring Perspective on the Culture of Basketball

I grew up in Louisville. Not born there, but raised from a very young age, have lived there ever since I can remember. I feel very passionately about my city and its unique, diverse inhabitants. It’s a quite a strange and slightly paradoxical city, however, as I will soon explain.

I was indoctrinated into the state of Kentucky’s culture of basketball as soon as I could walk, and as soon as I could talk, I was forced to make that critical decision that would define my identity as a Kentuckian for the rest of my life: Red or Blue. The pressure was immense; you were either one or the other, it was them or us, good or evil, through sickness and in health, until death do us part. To choose both, or neither, would necessarily result in a metaphorically eternal revocation of personal and social recognition- an inevitable “out-castration” of personhood (notice how many friends a Duke, North Carolina, or UConn fan has in this great state…). In essence, one who chooses such an ignoble and immoral path cannot possibly be given recognition as anything remotely human, they simply exist as a lifeless mass of flesh and bones and fecal matter (the pervading stinch of blasephemous shittiness cannot go unignored, unfortunately). And so, I sought out to find my niche within the country’s greatest college basketball tradition: Kentucky- the shining buckle of all sports belts, the bottomless breadbasket of all bottomless baskets hung up on a 10 foot post. Basketball, where would this great state be without it.

Growing up in a hard-nosed, blue collared, working middle-class, urban Louisville neighborhood left me with little choice: I was to be a Cardinal fan through and through, and I embraced it whole-heartedly. I was spoon fed Crum’s of Cardinal history, as old-timers looked back nostalgically on the elite ‘80’s. During my childhood, the height of Cardinaldom was embodied in the local hero, DeJuan Wheat (still one of my all time favorite players), product of Louisville’s own Ballard High School, and whose personalized banner would later adorn the low, dimly lit rafters of Jim Reuther Gymnasium, alongside the likes of Allen Houston and Jeff Lamp. Ballard is where I too would ultimately attend high school, furiously cheering on a Bruins team led by current UK player, Antiquawn Beckham.

I would go on to attend college in Lexington, where I was soon to experience, firsthand, the true scope and nature of Kentucky’s unrivaled basketball culture. To be quite honest, Louisville and Lexington are entirely different worlds, and to a native Louisvillian, it was somewhat of a culture shock to say the least. The transition during my first two years was made somewhat easier due to Billy G’s belligerent and discursive reign over Big Blue Nation. During this time, I reserved a soft spot in my heart for a (to put it as nicely as possible) struggling Wildcat team. One of my roommates was a diehard and we were made to suffer through the weekly tortures of every televised game (much as UL fans are enduring now). I couldn’t help feel sympathetic for him and every fan like him, and so long as they weren’t playing the Cards, I could find a way to justify cheering for the team I had been bred to passionately disdain as a way of life.

And then my world was turned upside down: Enter John Callipari. After almost immediate success, I witnessed a side of Lexington and Big Blue Nation that had been previously dormant: the beast had been violently awoken, it was alive and breathing and quickly gaining strength. I can describe it only in the cliché terms of a Jekyll/Hyde transformation, a deranged kind of 28 Days Later phenomenon, with legions of UK faithful pouring out of their dark, zombie lairs of purgatory shame. It was what every UofL fan meant when they said to their compatriot, “That’s a UK fan for you.”

My good-natured roommate, intoxicated with the newfound hopes of world basketball domination, had evolved into a wide-eyed mutant with a bone chillingly devilish laugh. He paced back and forth with the feverish intensity of a modern day mad scientist, twiddling his fingers and licking his lips as he drooled over the possibilities, absently staring off into an abyss of uninterupted thoughts of ultimate glory. What kind of monster had Dr. Victor “Callipari” Frankenstein created? A once humble and mild-mannered young man, corrupted by delusions of grandeur, channeled his ferocity on the nearest foe… Me.

The wit of his jokes and the sting of his outbursts increased twenty fold after UK defeated the Cards in Callipari’s first year. Some of his more memorable and traumatic sayings refuse to be coaxed out of the darkest crevices of my brain: “Louisville is like the state of Kentucky’s forsaken red-headed bastard step child.” Being a red-head and a step child myself, I felt mortally wounded; however, that was nothing compared to his all time favorite go-to line, “Louisville? Isn’t that in Indiana?” Yep, he just crossed the line. One thing that all Kentuckians share is a mutual hatred for that deprived state of Indiana. That morning taste left in your mouth after a long night of drinking copious amounts of alcohol, smoking cheap “light” cigarettes, and puking your brains out, that’s what you call an Indiana. That asshole who’s driving in the fast lane, going the same speed as the semi-truck right beside him for 20 miles before he finally decides to pass him and change lanes, he’s from Indiana. I digress…

Upon returning to Louisville this past Spring, I stumbled upon the deep, dark undercurrent that plagues the sub-conscience of Cardinal fans. There is, concealed deep in the hearts and minds of all Louisvillians, a profound sense of apathy and complacency towards life in general, as is manifested in their fanship. They expend a great amount of time and energy trying to make it look like they are doing something worthwhile in order to convince themselves that they are being productive and proactive, but in reality they are doing nothing at all. That is the paradox of Louisville: do as much as you can to do nothing at all. Why else has Pitino been granted the right to stick around for so long, even when it appears as though he is approaching the senile stages of old age. We fabricate extensive justifications for his child-like, temper-tantrum antics as nothing more than the quirky tendencies of a genius at work (God forbid anyone disturbs the artist while the artist is working). We blindly accept his post-game psychological chess matches as he toys with the emotions fans and players alike, and we never demand to know what is really going on in that smoke and mirrors brain of his. I must say that he is good at it… perhaps he will go into politics one day.

I had to ask myself why? Why do we put up with it? We are a city built upon the foundation of basketball, and, yet, we can’t grasp the concept of why our team consistently underachieves under a Hall of Fame coach who brings in above average recruits on a annual basis. Then it occurred to me. My generation of Cardinal fans has known only two coaches in their entire lifetime: Denny Crum (1971-2001) and Rick Pitino (2001-pressent). In fact, most average UofL fans probably don’t even know the names of a single coach who preceded them. Since 1944, The UofL men’s basketball program has been manned by a whopping total of four couches, the two aforementioned and the two that predated them: Bernard “Peck” Hickman (1944-1967) and his 17 year assistant coach turn head coach, John Dromo (1967-1971), whose career was cut short by a sudden heart attack in ‘71. All except Dromo have been, or will be, inducted into the college basketball Hall of Fame.

This impressive, and prestigious, coaching lineage has rarely left room for public dissent from the UofL faithful, simply because historically their has been little need to question the expertise, judgment, and character of these men. And as is the case with Lexington, basketball has shaped the modern day cultural landscape that is the city of Louisville and its citizens. Thus, it seems to me, that basketball is the very root our complacency and contentment with going absolutely nowhere as fast as possible.

To give a real life example of the way in which basketball has influenced the very infrastructure of a Louisvillian’s state of mind, and its tendency to be enthralled by and infatuated with dynasty-like figures who seem eerily akin to feudal lords reigning over a serfdom of “go with the flow” citizens, let me call your attention to the political giant, Jerry Abramson. Abramson served as mayor of Louisville from 1985-1998, fulfilling the full three-term limit (the only Louisville mayor to date to have ever accomplished such a feat). His original third term was extended by one full year as part of a state-mandated transition to align the dates of local and federal elections…. blah blah blah etc. etc. Nonetheless, his tenure as mayor did not end there. After the metro merger of Louisville and Jefferson Co, of which Abramson was said to have been the mastermind behind, he again assumed mayoral status from 2002-2010. This time around, however, he was deemed “Metro Mayor,” which is somehow different from the mayoral position he previously held. But how was it different… well nobody seemed to feel it was necessary to ask or to be provided with an answer, it just was. And so, Jerry Abramson was crowned with the lofty title of “Mayor for Life,” as he rarely faced any real competition and was almost unanimously voted into office every election.

In light of this, I can only conclude that Louisvillians have a deep-rooted desire to be told what to do and follow orders, or at least let other people (long-standing authority figures) make the important decisions that govern their lives. I have come to envy the city of Lexington in this respect: they are purpose driven and active, they know what they want damn-it, and they are going to get it one way or another. In essence, they have a winner’s attitude, there is no such thing as acceptable defeats or moral victories, just wins and losses, nothing more nothing less. It’s an attitude that was constructed by a tradition of basketball excellence and superiority, an attitude that is reflected in the culture of Lexington and central Kentucky, and has been fully embraced by its people. Only there, at the heart of the basketball world, is Blue not the color of melancholy; rather, it is the color of royal pride and divine praise, the color of go getters and do betters, the color of we don’t take no shit from no one. It is the color that unites a Nation. Not just a big blue nation, no that doesn’t begin to capture its essence or do justice to its spirit. It’s Mother F***ing Big Blue Nation!

Don’t mistake me, I am still a UofL fan and always will be, my truest of true hearts would never permit me to jump ship and abandon my team. I have the most reverent respect for the University of Kentucky Wildcats, it is long overdue and much deserved. However, beware to all: prepare for mass panic and utter chaos in the city of Louisville, as she begins to tread into the unknown territory of “What next?” As Ricky P. begins to unravel and expose his true self to the Cardinal Proud, this is the unfamiliar and perplexing question that Louisvillians will be confronted with, “What next?” To me it is an exciting question and I hope its answer will break the City’s long cycles of apathetic complacency and lethargy and awaken the beast within, both for the sake of the city itself and for the game of basketball that has come to play such an influential role in the shaping of all Kentuckians’ lives.<!--EndFragment-->