And, this year I'm also obligated to watch the team which is hosting the Coach Heir-Apparent:
And, who knows, if Tubby can't deliver soon maybe a new coach will be needed right quick. BTW - Wouldn't you hate to have a job where you were acknowledged to be among the very best and still get complained about by a yahoo like me who couldn't coach his way out of a paper bag? Tubby's got a job where a whole State full of yahoos do this. A couple of years without a national championship? Off with his head!!!!
4 comments:
Of course, as much as I treasure the college basketball season, I no longer live in Kentucky and, like as not, when I turn on CBS to watch the U.K. v. Kansas game the local station will be showing VaTech playing North-Southwestern Oklahoma Poltech Community College.
The local sports bar is just getting to know me too well.
My Virginia Cavaliers will be terrible this season, but I'm excited that my law school alma mater might be returning to the elite of college hoops. Georgetown has turned into a fun team to watch.
I wish Tubby had come to Virginia. We wouldn't complain about him!
I remember all that talk. However, I'm pretty sure it was all wishful thinking.
Coaching at UK is both a blessing and a curse. You are THE COACH and treated like royalty. You have a shot at each and every top-notch recruit in the nation each and every year. Basketball is king and there is no other sport. Football is a nice way to pass time until the season starts and Kentucky just isn't a baseball State. The entire Commonwealth is wedded to U.K. basketball. Sure there are other schools in Kentucky, but on any given day you will see students wearing U.K. hats & shirts on the other school's campus. The Commonwealth bleeds Blue and THE COACH is THE COACH.
It's hard to describe this to people in Virginia. The best I can come up with is to compare to VaTech fans. Take your typical VaTech fan and increase his rabidity by 25-50%. Now eliminate all the other schools whom people root for in Virginia and D.C. except for William & Mary (which we'll use to represent the UofL fanbase). Assume that everyone else in the Commonwealth grows up being this uber-VaTech fan and concentrates on only one aspect of the school (football for the Techies - the sport for Kentuckians). Now you begin to understand Kentucky.
The problem is that with this level of fanatacism comes a laaaarrgge group of people who have been watching UK basketball since they were a week old, brought home from the hospital and plopped down on daddy's lap in front of the TV. It's not unusual to run into statmonsters who can name all the members of the 1965 team if you ask them cold; everybody has a book somewhere in their house where they can find these facts if they're not a statmonster. It is unexcusable if the team finishes outside the great eight. It is very bad if the team finishes outside the final four. Final four losses might be acceptable if the loss is to the eventual champion and UK has a strong shot at winning it all next year. Everyone "knows" how the coach screwed up and lost the game. He used the wrong defense. He didn't play the right players. He let the team get lazy. Et cetera, &cetera, etc.
Anyway, Chad, you probably already know this (because of proximity). I just wanted to give others a taste of what it's like back in my Old Kentucky Home.
So true. It drives me nuts to drive through Kentucky and listen to sports talk radio.
Go Big Blue!
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