Posted: December 29th, 2010 | Filed under: Sports | No Comments »
For most hoopaholics around here, when their teams meet, the blur begins at tip-off.
For the victor’s rooters, it doesn’t end until the triumphant euphoria ebbs somewhat and they can relax, switch on the replay to see the details in a state of calm. The defeated eventually shake it off — more or less — deal with their grief, and move on to what normal people call real life. They could not care less about the stats. The big plays, even those that were valiant but not enough, couldn’t mean less.
I’m speaking here of the true believers, the acolytes. The gal in Cherokee Triangle pulling her No. 31 Unseld throwback off the shelf, making sure it’s laundered and ironed for the game. The plumber in Somerset who spent hours at a paint store making sure he was buying the exact shade of Big Blue for his man cave. The fellow in PRP who has been flying Cardinal flags for a month on his red F-150. The grandmother in Maysville who places good luck candles — blue, of course — in front of her cherished photo on the mantle, the one of Baron Adolph Rupp in his brown suit with Dan Issel.
For these fans of the Cats and Cards, this annual rite of winter, these 40 minutes — or more — are most often just a blizzard of imagery and sound. Surging strobe flashes of red and blue, punctuated by cheers, moans and squeaking hardwood.
Welcome to Hooparama!
Welcome to Louisville vs. Kentucky.
This is our cherished aggravation, the epicenter of the commonwealth’s year.
It is pure emotion. The details are for later. Who scored what, who grabbed the key rebound, who let the ball slip from his grasp at crunch time? Those contemplations come only in the aftermath.
When it’s game on, there is total nail-biting, hand-wringing, hallucinogenic infarction-inducing immersion in the flow with only vague awareness of XXs and 00s, shooting percentages and defensive switches.
It’s we score. Yes!
They score. Oh no!
Rare is the Cardinal fan who at the buzzer could recite any details of what they call the Samaki Walker Game on New Year’s Day ’95, when the pivotman’s triple double led U of L to an improbable 88-86 win. (Walker tallied 14 points, 10 rebounds and 11 blocked shots.) Few Cardinal supporters paid attention then or later to the players on the forgettable 12-20 team that won in Lexington in ’97. (The leading scorers on that, the worst team of the Crum era, were Nate Johnson, Alex Sanders, Marques Maybin, Tony Williams and Cameron Murray.)
Only some Wildcat boosters kept a scoresheet of Rex Chapman’s exact numbers in his epic performance in an 85-51 decimation of Freedom Hall in December of 1986. (He was 10/20 from the field, including 5/8 from beyond the arc, with 4 assists and 2 steals. It just seemed during that Big Blue blitzkrieg that he scored all 85.)
This annual basketball brouhaha between the Wildcats and Cardinals is the donnybrook that gives meaning to the commonwealth’s moniker, “Dark and bloody ground.”
You are either or Red, or you are Blue.
There are but a very few Kentuckians who switch allegiances.
The stories of change they tell are disparate. Perhaps it was circumstance. A Louisvillian, feeling the Wildcat spirit after matriculating at UK. A Cat fan in youth who, through coincidence, befriends some Cardinal luminaries. Yet their stories are similar in one regard: Once the metamorphosis is complete, their loyalty
is inveterate.
And, yes, there are some odd few, those quirky souls who say they truly cheer for both teams, that all they want to see is a good game.
Don’t believe them.
Perhaps those “dispassionate” observers can watch the action with some acuity. For the rest of us, it’s all a haze when the game clock is ticking.
But beforehand, for the last few weeks and the next couple days, until the noon New Year’s Eve tip, it is all about assessment. (Except, of course, on the message boards, which continue to be safe harbor for the most inane, often vile regurgitation of smack.)
Coming into this season’s renewal of the rivalry, there are more questions than answers. Making it arguably the most intriguing, difficult to decipher match-up of this decade in which UK holds a 6-4 edge in victories.
There have surely been some close encounters in recent tussles, especially here in Louisville. The Cats won by a deuce in 2001. And again in 2004, when Patrick Sparks knocked down those controversial free throws at the tilt’s end. In 2009, Louisville had the game in hand, did its best to give it away, then snatched it back when Edgar Sosa nailed a winning trey.
Who, if anybody, is ready to imprint his name in the lore of the series like Sparks and Sosa?
Can Rakeem Buckles check Terrence Jones? Will Coach Rick Pitino actually give him the opportunity?
Does neophyte Gorgui Dieng have enough savoir fair to perform capably in the unique intensity of this game? Does it matter against Eloy Vargas and Josh Harrellson?
Who has the wherewithal to seize an advantage at point, Brandon Knight or Peyton Siva?
Who from beyond the arc will knock down the long ones in this first meeting of the rivals at the Yum! Center, Doron Lamb or Mike Marra?
Which of the supporting actors brings an award-quality performance to the big stage, Kyle Kuric, DeAndre Liggins, Darius Miller or Chris Smith?
Will Cats fans get their wish: Jon Hood as surprise hero?
Is Preston Knowles ready to impose his will in a battle of this magnitude?
Which of these poor free throw shooting squads will tally important charity tosses?
Will UK’s tougher schedule early in the season aid its cause?
Which of the coaches, John Calipari or Rick Pitino, the bitterest of rivals, bests the other in strategy and in-game adjustments?
Under the Big Top, amid the numbing tumult and emotional delirium, these are the questions that will be answered Friday afternoon.
For the most ardent of diehards, the game itself will speed past as if chimera. The Yum! will be a carnival; the arena, a neon pastiche of primary reds and blues (too much of the latter, frankly, for the home folks).
Put the ball through the hoop and win a prize for the lady!
One joyous side leaves with a stuffed panda; the other, disconsolate, with empty pockets.
Only later, during endless retellings, win or lose, will the details come clear.
Posted: September 7th, 2010 | Filed under: Features, Sports | No Comments »
If springtime is the season of rejuvenation and frolic; fall heralds recommitment and refocus, a time that takes the measure of man.
Labor Day, summer’s traditional end, marks the kickoff of what has evolved as America’s favorite pastime.
How and why the nation turned its wandering eyes from the bucolic pastures of baseball to the thunder of headgears and the grandeur of script Ohio that define football is a semester’s course unto itself. Suffice it to say the changeover occurred sometime after Joe Willie wrenched the pigskin planet off its axis in Super Bowl III, but way before ESPN greenlighted Brett Favre’s life into a daily soap opera.
Football is now the deal.
And this autumn, in this city, in this commonwealth, there are cultural considerations that make the season just over the horizon the most fascinating ever. Perhaps even a portent of significant social change.
The state’s three major football schools have new coaches. By odds-defying coincidence, the triad of new leaders are men of color.
Willie Taggert at Western Kentucky and Joker Phillips at UK are alums who now lead the charges of their alma maters. Their stories are worthy.
But nothing like that of Charlie Strong, tapped to lead Louisville’s Cardinals out of the football wasteland, where it has been deposited by a coaching fraud who turned a national contender with talent and Heisman-quality leadership into an also ran.
How Strong traveled the circuitous, impediment-laden byways from the rural burg of Batesville, Arkansas to the University of Louisville is not epic in the Homerian sense. But it is poetic nonetheless, a fable of fortitude and forbearance, how what is good and right can eventually prevail despite pitfalls.
When Charlie Strong was born and raised a half century ago in Batesville, Arkansas, hard on the edge of the Ozarks in “Deliverance” country, it was a town of 5,000. It is less than twice that now. Yet it’s still produced its share of favorite sports sons. Like NASCAR’s Mark Martin, a contemporary of Louisville’s coach. Former major leaguer Rick Monday was born there. So too, Ryan Mallett, now the quarterback for former U of L coach Bobby Petrino at Arkansas.
As it turns out, football wasn’t Strong’s favorite endeavor as a kid.
“I loved baseball. Centerfield. But when I was old enough I had to work in the summers. At my uncle’s service station. So I switched to a winter sport.”
It is that work ethic — taking care of basic business first — that has guided Strong along his career arc.
Quarterback Adam Froman explained to SI.com’s Andy Staples that it’s not difficult to follow when you see Strong jogging before sun up and lifting. “He’ll get in there in the weight room, and just put 315 [pounds] on the bar and start repping it out.”
Defensive tackle Gregg Scruggs: “He works hard. He makes us work hard.”
Charlie Strong’s resumé proves it makes a difference.
Perhaps the most impressive of stats is this. According to Strong’s bio at the University of Florida website, in 64 of 92 games when he was defensive coordinator, the Gators tallied points off turnovers. In 70% of the games, Strong’s defense scored. Stunning.
Which acumen is why he’s coached in 21 bowl games, including 14 played in January. Then there are those two national titles while directing the Florida defense. In 2009’s title battle, the Gators held the highest scoring offense in college football history to 14 points, a mere fifty points under Oklahoma’s per game average.
Charlie Strong’s leadership capabilities have been on display for years.
While preparing for that BCS title match against the Sooners, Florida mentor Urban Meyer told the press, “Do I think Charlie Strong would be a great head coach? No question about it. Do I think he’s deserving? No question about it.”
A decade ago, while coaching at South Carolina, Lou Holtz told the Columbia (S.C.) State: “Charlie Strong should be a head coach. He’s anxious to be, and he and I have talked about how you get a head coach’s job. I know we’re going to lose him eventually.”
Years before that, while at Notre Dame, Holtz recognized Strong’s potential and became a mentor, giving the then position coach a binder and advising him to fill it with ideas how to lead his own team. Then to take it on interviews to prove he was ready.
The problem, well documented and oft discussed, is that those interviews rarely came. When they did, many — nay, most — were a sham.
Charlie Strong is black. Strike one.
Victoria Strong, Charlie’s wife, is white. Strike two. Strike three.
Sad to say, but true.
Strong has spoken frankly of an interview he had with a school he knew already had secretly hired another coach, but needed to feign diversity.
But Strong carried on, never whining. Yet never afraid to publicly discuss the reality of discrimination. He told the Orlando Sentinel in 2009, he’d heard too many times to gloss over them the murmurings why, despite his credentials, he was being passed over.
Of one particular position at a southern school he didn’t get, he said, “Everybody always said I didn’t get that job because my wife is white.”
To the credit of Tom Jurich, who hired Strong without needing to see that binder, it wasn’t a hindrance at all. Nor has it been for this community which the coach says “has embraced us (he and family) and taken us in.”
The reactions of fans have been almost unanimously positive.
“He’s everything you want in a head coach,” says one local businessman, who purchased one of the new boxes at Papa John’s but asked not to be named. “His football IQ is off the chart. He’s the real deal. He’s going to be very successful.”
Long time fan and alum, Dr. George Nichols: “We will be a success within three years. I’ve heard Strong speak twice. Very impressive.”
Truth. Charlie Strong is already a success.
In the classroom. He has not one but two Masters degrees.
On the field. He has been lauded as the country’s best defensive coordinator.
Naturally, he expects and has asked a lot of the Cardinals. “He works us hard every single day,” says defensive end Malcolm Mitchell. Yet there is respect. “I love this coach,” adds Mitchell.
But this stalwart man’s moment has arrived. At half past three on the first Saturday of September, with hip hop blaring from the PA and cheerleaders tumbling and fans screaming, head coach Charlie Strong will at last stride onto his own turf.
“I enjoy being captain of the ship. But it means there’s a job to do.”
Thus head coach Charlie Strong will savor the moment but be focused. Knowing he will have traveled the longest route through the most detours to the stadium, he will be ready.
Posted: May 26th, 2010 | Filed under: Community, Sports | No Comments »
When LEO hit newsstands in the summer of 1990, college sports was not mired in the profit über alles ethos it is today.
ESPN was but a decade old and had not yet cornered the market in collegiate football, basketball and baseball. Nor in minor sports, which with the advent of ESPNU, are now in the stranglehold of the beast from Bristol.
The rah rah sis boom bah, win one for the ol’ alma mater attitude had died years before with the Gipper and Rudy Vallee. The once-legit concept of “student-athlete” — at least in major sports — had become delusion.
Not every school that eked out wins over East Nevada Tech and South Dakota A&P found a spot in a bowl game named for some upstart Silicon Valley venture. Schools that didn’t make it into the NCAA basketball tournament accepted without squawking that an 18-14 record was not post season-worthy.
The difference between University of Louisville sports then and now is just as great in some respects. Just the same as it ever was in others.
At the time, there was no women’s lacrosse at U of L, a sport that now has it’s own dedicated stadium. Nor women’s softball, which now has its own bucolic diamond. Nor women’s golf. Nor women’s rowing.
What is now a state-of-the-art athletic complex that has hosted national and conference championships was then a gravel parking lot near I-65.
Cardinal baseball — which also has its own new ballyard — was an afterthought. With a College World Series appearance now on its résumé, U of L baseball is becoming a national power.
The summer of 1990 marked the halfway point of Howard Schnellenberger’s regime as coach of Cardinal football. Hired before the 1985 schedule, the first five seasons for the former national title coach at Miami were up and down as he attempted to reinvent U of L football. Playing in ramshackle Fairgrounds Stadium, his squads suffered through three desultory seasons before going 8-3 in 1988 but without a bowl appearance. They fell to 6-5 the following year.
The Cardinals reached unprecedented heights the fall after LEO was born, tying their opener to San Jose State, losing at Southern Miss, but winning 10, including an improbable and resounding 34-7, New Year’s Day victory over Alabama in the Fiesta Bowl.
During Schnellenberger’s tenure, Louisville remained staunchly independent at a time when conference affiliation was becoming increasingly imperative. In fact, the coach cited U of L’s nascent affiliation with Conference USA as one of the reasons he jumped ship before the Cards collided with the national title he promised. As well as before completion of Papa John’s Stadium, for which he was the prime mover.
Louisville football has been a roller coaster ride ever since.
Louisville basketball also reached a cusp in 1990.
The ’89-’90 season ended 27-9 but with a disheartening loss to Ball State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. It was the type of opponent to which Hall of Famer Denny Crum’s teams rarely lost. U of L was the team of the ’80s in college basketball. National championships were won in ’80 and ’86, with two other Final Four appearances.
It all changed during the ’90-’91 season. The Cards went 14-16, the school’s first losing campaign in a half century. Only one time after that did a Crum-coached Cardinal team make it as far as the Elite Eight. Crum resigned during a contentious scenario with Athletic Director Tom Jurich after a horrendous 12-19 record in 2000-2001.
Louisville ended its Final Four drought in 2005 under Coach Rick Pitino. Last season, the school’s final stint in Freedom Hall, ended with a resounding defeat to California in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
U of L football, hoping for yet another refurbishment, will open next season with a new coach, Charlie Strong, in an expanded stadium.
U of L basketball will open next season in a new downtown arena against national runner-up Butler. Most longtime season ticket holders are feeling left behind by the athletic department’s money-over-loyalty policy that is governing the current seat selection process for the new facility.
The stench of upcoming major conference realignment is in the air. The demise of the Big East may be a reality sooner than later.
The University of Louisville, not an obvious fit in the SEC, Big 10, ACC or Big 12, might be an odd school out.
For all the successes and expansion of the last score of years, Cardinal athletics remain in a state of flux today, just as they were in 1990.
Posted: March 9th, 2010 | Filed under: Culture, Features, Sports | 2 Comments »
Phil Rollins has been immersed in the University of Louisville hoops tradition for half a century. His playing days predate Freedom Hall.
As a senior in 1956, he starred on Louisville’s team that ruled Madison Square Garden and has been a fixture at Freedom Hall since 1963 after his pro career ended.
He’s red and black to the core. His business card includes a photo of him in his Cardinal uniform and reads “1956 NIT Champs.”
“What I remember is that a lot of people thought Freedom Hall was going to be a white elephant. It’ll never be what they want.
“I was in the service, but made it back for the first game in Freedom Hall. The place was packed. Charlie (Tyra) broke his record. Tommy Hawkins played a great game for Notre Dame.”
U of L contested its first tilt in Freedom Hall on Dec. 21, 1956. By that time, two other games had already been held there: Ed Diddle’s Western Kentucky State College Hilltoppers (later to become WKU) bested San Francisco, 61-57, several days earlier in the official inaugural. Bellarmine played an “exhibition” versus a squad from Fort Knox.
The Cardinals whipped Notre Dame, 85-75, before 13,756 fans in their first bout at the Hall. It was in that game that Tyra, cover boy on the first-ever Street & Smith College Basketball Yearbook, tallied 40, including a perfect 18 for 18 underhanded free throws. Sophomore guard Harold Andrews scored a dozen in his first start. Bill Darragh scored 17.
Darragh, a season ticket holder to this day, remembers that game as well as the Cards’ other two wins at the fairgrounds that season. U of L moved permanently from the Jefferson County Armory (Louisville Gardens) the following season.
“Freedom Hall was big, new and shiny. We liked the Armory, but the locker room was like a furnace room. It was dirty and dingy. Playing at Freedom Hall was exciting…
“In the Christmas tournament we beat St. Louis. It was payback. They’d beaten us earlier in the season. Against Dayton, I missed a shot that would have won in regulation. But it made a good friend happy. He’d bet on us. We won and we were able to cover the spot in overtime.”
It was an auspicious start to what’s been an amazing run in the Hall, given the school’s 680-plus wins against fewer than 150 losses there. This Saturday, that long, successful run will come to a close when the Cards play their final game in Freedom Hall. Next season, the team will move into a new downtown arena, leaving behind a place they’ve called home for more than five decades. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 16th, 2009 | Filed under: Culture, Personalities, Ruminations, Sports | No Comments »
A calendar hangs on the wall by the four repair bays at Cecil’s Chevron downtown. Notated prominently — in thick black marker — are the dates and starting times of U of L games. Other matters are in regular ink.
Johnny Cecil is a Cardinal fan.
He has season tickets. He goes to away games when possible. He’s paid tuition for his kids to attend the university.
He is invested.
The morning after Charlie Strong’s introduction as Louisville’s new football coach, Cecil was smiling once again.
“I tried to watch the press conference on my computer here,” he said. “Then I listened on the radio. I watched on TV last night.”
Asked his initial impression, Cecil didn’t mince words.
“It’s a home run.
“I like that he’s seasoned,” he continued. “I like that his recruiting strength is in Florida and areas in the South where Louisville needs to be recruiting. I never understood how we’d get kids from out West to come here.”
Then there’s the topic mentioned in nearly every conversation about Strong’s introduction as U of L’s new football coach, the 10 seconds of immediate Cardinal lore known as The Moment.
At the press conference, Strong was speechless and fought back tears when acknowledging his fears that a head coaching position he’s long craved might never have come.
He was surely remembering the jobs he interviewed for but didn’t get despite his résumé. Like Minnesota, where he was interviewed under the guise of being a candidate for a job already filled.
Strong allowed his emotions to take charge. It was a stunning, deeply human moment.
Johnny Cecil was touched: “I could feel it.”
Football, the most popular sport in America, is also the manliest. Fans want their teams aggressive. They want their teams to play mean, to hit hard, to strike fast. They want their coaches strong and assertive.
How ironic then that the instant that has galvanized a fractured Cardinal football fan base was a tender interlude punctuated by tears of joy. Many have mentioned how Strong displayed more emotion in those dozen silent seconds than his mechanical predecessor did in three years.
The consensus from every corner is that Tom Jurich made a great choice. “Maybe a perfect fit,” says Wildcat, his online name notwithstanding, a major U of L pigskin supporter.
But, as Cecil acknowledged, “A new coach is always a crapshoot.”
Strong has never been a head coach. (Not that such a line on one’s résumé assures success, as Cardinal fans well know. Exhibit A: Ron Cooper. Exhibit B: Steve Kragthorpe.)
But Strong has had stellar mentors. Steve Spurrier, Lou Holtz and Urban Meyer all coached national champions. Seth Hancock has been an icon in the thoroughbred industry for decades.
The fellow knows how to coach ’em up on defense. In one BCS title match-up, Strong’s Gator defenders held Ohio State to 82 yards, bashing the favored Buckeyes 41-14. In last year’s title game, Charlie’s charges held Oklahoma, the most prolific offense ever in college football, to 14 points. This season, Florida was top five in four different defensive categories.
Yes, the statistics are there.
He’s coached umpteen All-Americans, even more high NFL draft picks, national defensive players of the year, big-time award winners, etc., etc.
The leadership and defensive coaching talent are there.
Strong knows the big time. Along with Florida, he’s coached at Notre Dame, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. Roaming sidelines around the New Year has become an annual ritual.
Experience is there.
Yet fame and fortune are fickle. Favorable outcomes are never a foregone conclusion. Strong has been left a woefully bare cupboard. The current U of L squad may be earnest, but it is thin in numbers and lacking sufficient championship talent.
In this Internet age, when the next latest and greatest is but a mouse click away, fans want microwave-fast gratification — yesterday. Adulation such as Strong is now experiencing can be fleeting. Loyalties change as quickly as some pseudonymous blowhard can make up a rumor in a chat room.
Alum and longtime fan Fred Smart observes, “We need organization and inspiration. We need to get the fans unified. And we need players.”
The fans seem united for now, and hopefully beyond next season’s inevitable setbacks.
Organization, staff selection and recruiting are among the many variables to be revealed between now and spring practice. (Early returns are positive. Strong nabbed a four-star quarterback within 24 hours of his hire.)
Former coach Howard Schnellenberger trumpeted a collision course with a national championship. Ron Cooper dazzled when he arrived in town clutching a list of 50 ambitious endeavors he wished to accomplish. John L. Smith charmed with his smirk, swagger and bowl-worthy squads. Bobby Petrino just won, baby.
Steve Kragthorpe, like a vampire, sucked the lifeblood out of the program.
If Charlie Strong repairs Louisville football as well as Johnny Cecil repairs cars, Cardinal fans are in for a grand tour.
Posted: October 21st, 2009 | Filed under: Personalities, Sports | 4 Comments »
The purpose here is to discuss Steve Kragthorpe.
More exactly, Steve Kragthorpe’s situation and the downward momentum of his career at Louisville: how he replaced Bobby Petrino, how the team was immediately less good, how the fans became disgruntled, how that disenchantment has escalated to cacophony, and how those fans want him gone — yesterday, if not sooner.
But first to Susan Boyle.
You remember her, right? She was all the rage as a singing sensation on one of those British who-is-going-to-be-the-next-superstar shows. One day, nobody had ever heard of the frumpy housefrau with the amazing voice. The next day, millions were viewing a video of her stunning debut on the Web.
How long ago was that? Weeks? Months? Last year?
Then she showed up soon enough with a makeover and a record contract, at which point all those instant fans abandoned their adulation and moved on.
Within a time frame most accurately measured in hours or days, they went veni, vidi, relici. With apologies to Plutarch, they came, they saw, they moved on.
Which is when I coined the term, “Boyle point.” It’s the instant in this accelerated cybergalactic age when our latest fascination becomes what was once called “yesterday’s papers,” the moment when we’ve mouse-clicked to the next diversion, the moment when the rage’s upward arc heads south.
So, as U of L’s football season trudges inexorably to ignominy, the fascination has moved from the field to the three-ring circus that is the discussion of Kragthorpe’s future in Louisville, and who his successor might be.
And in this saga, there have been too many Boyle points to compute. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 16th, 2009 | Filed under: Culture, Ruminations, Sports | No Comments »
Larry Eustachy is now the hoops coach at Southern Mississippi.
A little over a half decade ago, when he was at Iowa State, he was legitimately in the conversation about the next great hoops coach. He was already a member of the Party Boy Hall of Fame. He was hangin’ with Betty Coed. And all her sorority sisters. Always with a drink in hand.
Larry Eustachy lost his job. And found a life.
To salvage his career, Eustachy entered treatment for the deadly disease which with he is afflicted. Alcoholism. Six years later, Eustachy remains sober, and, reading between the lines of his interview with Parrish, is an active daily participant in a 12 Step recovery process.
The purpose of Gary Parrish’s interview was to provide perspective on the Billy Clyde Gillispie situation. Gillispie, recently arrested in rural Kentucky for DUI, has entered John Lucas’s rehab facility in Houston. Eustachy publicly expressed his support and willingness to share his experiences, hoping to give strength and resolve to Gillispie to stay the course.
You can read Parrish’s award worthy column here.
In the interview, Eustachy correctly parallels the diseases of alcoholism and cancer. He knew it would bring out the scoffers. Which it did. Parrish wrote a follow up column about the comments he received. It’s linked in the first story, or you can get to it here.
I’ve often said reiterated that I don’t comment at this venue on the personal lives of the sports personalities I cover, the men and women who are important to folks here in Kentuckiana. And I certainly gave Gillispie way more than my allotment of shit over his behavior while he was UK coach.
But this is no time for silence.
Of all the diseases from which people suffer, alcoholism and drug addiction might be the most misunderstood. Comments online and on the street about Gillispie’s situation indicate that.
So it is. And so it shall probably remain.
Such a pity.
I now pray for Billy Gillispie as well as for alcoholics and drug addicts who still suffer and patients battling cancer as I have during the course of my recoveries from those equally debilitating diseases.
I don’t in any way mean to condone some of Gillispie’s well chronicled life mistakes while at UK, and elsewhere for that matter. But I do understand that he has the opportunity, if he gets and stays sober, to avoid such gaffes in the future.
I hope he makes it.
And I hope Larry Eustachy’s Southern Miss Golden Eagles make it to the dance. But know that, at least for today, he’ll be okay if they don’t.
Posted: September 2nd, 2009 | Filed under: Sports | 1 Comment »
Oh what a night it was: Nov. 2, 2006.
Cardinal fans frolicked out of Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium in a state of such ecstasy, many smiled tolerantly at the brewski-overloaded nabobs pissing in the bushes.
Maybe Howard Schnellenberger’s bluster was indeed more than boast. U of L had just sent the third-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers hightailing it back to Morgantown with wet powder and a jammed musket.
As pigskin planet’s population watched on prime-time Thursday, the Cards’ future route appeared in the headlights’ beams. That collision course with a national title jumped in front of Louisville like a deer on River Road.
Louisville 44, West Virginia 34.
A week later U of L’s hopes were roadkill. The Cards blew a 25-7 lead and lost to Rutgers. Instead of vying for a national title, they landed in the Orange Bowl, registering a tepid win over Wake Forest. Supercoach Bobby Petrino jumped to the pros.
Louisville hasn’t been a blip on the national radar since. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 20th, 2009 | Filed under: Personalities, Ruminations, Sports | 1 Comment »
Damn you, Tom Watson.
There you stood, nine feet away from eliminating every ache and pain in my rapidly aging body. You knock that putt in and I’d be able to put on my Brooks Beasts and run pain free, my pulled hammy miraculously healed. I could jump on my Trek and tackle those hills in Cherokee Park without having to click to the lowest gear. At Hogan’s Fountain, I’d still have breath. I’d arise in the morning and not have to stretch first thing before being able to trundle to take care of business in the bathroom.
You wrinkled ol’ linkster, if you had sunk that baby and won the British Open, it would be a whole new ballgame for every one of us old farts losing the smackdown with our dotage. We’d be able to get out of our recliners without having to push up with our arms.
I’d have sat down this morning at my Young Chang upright and both hands would have worked together like their supposed to, chords with the left, melody with the right in harmonious, seamless symmetry. 12/8 time would ring like 12/8 time. “Blueberry Hill” would actually sound like Fats Domino, not “What’s that song he’s playing?”
But no, Tom, bless your heart, you acted your age, our age. You were attacked by the yips and short stroked a chance at immortality.
So it’s Monday Blue Monday just like last week and next and life, as it inexorably does, is once again inching forward to its inevitable conclusion.
If nothing else, Tom Watson, your flirtation with the unthinkable underscored one of the absolutes. Don’t wager with time. Time always wins. The under always prevails.
Ask Lance Armstrong, as defiant an SOB as ever laced ‘em up for competition. On the same day, Tom Watson failed in his attempt to send the Father Time packing, the greatest cyclist ever fell prey to the same delusion on the climb to Verbier, a challenge he would have swallowed whole and spit out with disdain a half decade ago.
You know those lyrics to that song, the one the Stones stole from Irma Thomas?
Time is on my side, Yes it is.
Great song. But wrong.
There is an arc to our physicality. We can cheat it by staying in shape, eating right, finding the balance with the cosmos. But we shall succumb. There is no winning argument against it.
Which isn’t to say we don’t hold our heads up high when we try. Tom Watson did. Lance Armstrong kinda did. (He’s a cranky ol’ boy, that one.)
So can we. I attacked those inclines in the park today. Breathed hard at the top of Golf Course Hill, but breathed nonetheless. Made it all the way in a higher gear too.
I thank Tom Watson for the elixir, the impetus to rejuvenate.
Now I’m going to practice piano.
Posted: June 1st, 2009 | Filed under: Cinema, Culture, Ruminations, Sports | No Comments »
How long ago was it that we first heard of TV/ singing phenom Susan Boyle?
Fifteen minutes? Twenty at most.
The video of her initial appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” had over 200 million hits on the internet.
Her popularity was multifaceted. She could — and still can — really sing. Great Broadway voice. Big. Impressive. Affecting.
And she was Everywoman. Ordinary looks. Ordinary clothes. A shade zaftig. Hard scrabble upbringing. Those play big most everywhere, especially in the British Isles where proletarian has always been a popular character trait.
Even Simon Whatisname was smitten. (Unless, of course, that was show biz. He does own that TV franchise where she was a contestant.)
Then she went Madonna. Sort of. Did kind of a makeover without the calculation and acmen.
Star ascends. Star descends.
I remember thinking when she first blasted into our conciousness how she was the perfect metaphor for our instantaneous cybergalactic age. One day she’s nobody. Next day her name is on the lips of everybody in every Starbucks — even the one in Sevilla across the street from Europe’s oldest gothic cathedral.
Now I believe her career arc has become the new celebrity paradigm. She lost that talent show and her incredible popularity, because, well, because, hey, Susan Boyle was sooooooooooo an hour ago. And we tired of her fame, fleeting as it seems to have been. She lost to a group of dancers named, uh, what is their name, uh, Diversity, that’s right.
So Susan Boyle’s career arc lasted, okay more than twenty minutes, but not much more than a month.
Welcome to the age of what have you got new for me this very minute?
And, so, henceforth, I shall refer to that point when a new fad, phase, trend, celeb crests in celebrity and commences its rapid plummet as the Boyle Point.
Look for her next week on VH1′s latest “Where Are They Now?” special. That old footage should be really neat to see.
– c d k
Posted: May 1st, 2009 | Filed under: Cinema, Community, Culture, Music, Ruminations, Sports, TV | 6 Comments »
Revised 5/02/09 11:20 a.m.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is now forty years on, and grooving as strong as ever. As we do, my krewe and I made it down for opening weekend. It was my 23d JazzFest, including 21 of the last 22. (For a primer on JazzFest and Quint Davis, the festival’s long-time major domo, you can read this article from the New Orleans newspaper.
It is a rite of spring. It is, as somebody far more poetic than myself once articulated, “the gravitational pull of my year.”
The first two albums I ever owned were recorded in New Orleans. “Here’s Little Richard” and a Fats Domino album, the title of which I’ve long forgotten. Fats and I share a birthday. There is something about the music of this town, and the city itself, flawed and fantastic, that cut through to my soul. I’d explain further, but I simply cannot.
JazzFest is my favorite thing to do.
What follows are some moments from this year’s festival. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 1st, 2009 | Filed under: Sports | 1 Comment »
Kerthunk! Splat! Thud!
This is the way the season ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
Thirty one Ws. Six losses. That’s a campaign to savor.
But this last stunner of a defeat feels like a karate kick to the solar plexus.
The question is whether we should have seen this coming? A loss to a team the Cardinal Nation considered inferior, preventing U of L from advancing to the Final Four as the NCAA’s top seeded squad. A numbing defeat to a lower seeded team that was plundered in its conference tourney, was nip and tuck to beat woeful IU late in the season and lost at home to perennial nonentity Northwestern for heavens’ sakes.
Know this. Tom Izzo wins these games. His street-bully tough Michigan State Spartans had Louisville reeling and measured the entire tilt. Louisville flinched, didn’t fight back and lost going away 64-52. Read the rest of this entry »
