Posted: March 9th, 2010 | Filed under: Culture, Features, Sports | 3 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 | 2 Comments »
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 »
Posted: March 25th, 2009 | Filed under: Sports | 2 Comments »
Now they’re even.
Louisville and Siena, that is.
The Cardinals narrowly escaped, 79-72, advancing to the Sweet 16. (Thanks to the Kentucky High School Athletic Association which owns that trademarked term. It kindly granting the NCAA permission to use it.)
And there’s some history working here. The win evens the all-time series between these disparate schools at one apiece. There’s an interesting tale to all that. As if you hadn’t already guessed. Here it comes: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: March 24th, 2009 | Filed under: Sports | No Comments »
1 – A school has won two national championships, each with a coach making his only Final Four appearance. Name the school, the coaches and the years?
North Carolina State. Norm Sloan in 1974. Jim Valvano in 1983.
2 – Three coaches have won a national title in their first year coaching at a school. Name them, the schools and the years they won?
Ed Jucker, Cincinnati, 1961. Steve Fisher, Michigan, 1989. Tubby Smith, UK, 1998.
3 – U of L has made 8 appearances in the Final Four. How many Cardinals have seen action in Final Four games? You didn’t think I was going to toss you all softballs, did you? Feel free to guess.
69.
4 – Have two teams from the same state ever played in the title game? If so, name the state, the teams, the years and the winners?
Twice. Same teams. Same state. Cincy and Ohio State, 1961 and 1962.
5 – What school in this year’s tournament won the very first NCAA tourney game?
Villanova.
6 – In three different seasons, more than one school entered the tournament undefeated. Name the years and the teams?
1968: Houston & St. Bonaventure. 1971: Marquette & Penn. 1976: IU & Rutgers.
7 – Name the three arenas that have hosted more than five national title games?
Freedom Hall, Madison Square Garden, Municipal Auditorium (Kansas City).
8 – What freshman scored the most points in a title game? Name him, his team, the year and the number of points?
Toby Baily, UCLA, 26 in 1995.
9 – What player attempted the most field goals in a title game? How many? The year?
Purdue’s Rick Mount against UCLA, 1969. 36 FG attempts.
10 – Name the four teams seeded #1 in the first year the NCAA seeded teams. What year?
1979. North Carolina, Notre Dame, Indiana State, UCLA. (Winner Michigan State was a 2 seed.)
— Seedy K
Posted: March 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: Sports | No Comments »
. . . or anything.
But . . . I got to the UD Arena and realized I was wearing a green shirt. Not exactly Siena green, but green nonetheless.
So . . . I changed to another color.
Red, in fact. Not Cardinal red, but red nonetheless.
I’ve never been one to wear my favorite school’s colors. Even during all important NCAA games. I am secure enough in my loyalty that it has always seem gratuitous. In my case at least. I love seeing lots of red, and my heart swells, like when I was just out in the parking lot — changing my shirt, you know — and I saw all the U of L fans arriving.
But . . . a red shirt was all that I had that was clean.
It’s not quite the same red as the red of the watch I have taken to wearing during Cards’ tilts this season. And it’s a different red than the red of my u-trou.
Okay, enough info.
Go Cards.
— Seedy K
