My Friend, The Hater

I don't know why Kelly must hate on UK so much. This is one of my best friends, and he can't even give me a little support for a team I love. It's not like we're dating and I'm a huge Steelers fan or something. Because, you know, that would be way funnier.

Was he beaten up by some UK fans in high school? Is he still mad about when Eric and I gave him shit when we all watched UK beat UC in the Tourney back in 2005? Is he angry that UC has not had a relevant hoops player since Steve Long or Kenyon Martin's right leg? I don't know, but it makes me sad. I cheer for his teams that I don't really care for, and I get nothing in return. I think I'm challenge him to a fight in the gas station parking lot at 3 after school. Yeah, I'm that bitter and childish about it.

It saddens me because he bitches about UK like we've done something personal to him. What also slays me most is he always brings up this "UK fans have such a sense of entitlement" argument, which would somewhat make sense if he wasn't a die-hard Notre Dame football fan. Are you kidding me? Talk about sense of entitlement. Shit, I think ND is Entitlement U. This is a school that thinks it's above every bowl game that isn't a national championship game, so it doesn't play in them (unless it's in Hawaii, in which case Jimmy Clausen gets to show off his manly Bon Jovi locks of hair). Plus, he's the only fan of a team that I know of that once had a banner of his team's national titles hanging on his wall (which would still be there had he not lost it in a bet with an Ohio State fan). I have a bottle opener that plays the UK fight song, no replica title banners on my walls. He used to say that this belief came from growing up in Cincy where all the stations only talked UK and ignored UC. Sounds like someone needs to take that up with the programming people, because I seriously doubt it's UK's fault that the Cincinnati TV and radio stations; again, sounds like an Ohio problem, not a Kentucky problem.

It's further sad to have Kelly hate the Cats when besides his weak "entitlement" excuse is our new head coach, John Calipari. I won't defend Calipari's past shit. It's not worth it, the NCAA already did that. Plus, we beat UMass in the Final Four in 1996 and won the title, so I'm just fine with it, and unless I was secretly on the hiring committee, I have to accept whatever head coach UK hires (though I would have certainly kept Tubby and never gone down the Gillespie road but that got rectified and he can continue drinking himself silly back in Texas). Oh, but don't bring up drinking and head coaches, because you might just have to bring in the poster child for that, which would be Bob Huggins. Remember him? The coach who was arrested for driving under the influence in 2004, and was videotaped during the traffic stop by police and aired on national tav. Among the gems he stated were, "Do you know who I am," and "You can't do this to me." The cops said Huggins had vomited on his car door, and that his excuse as to why he was out driving hammered was that he had been with a recruit. That's probably not helping your case there, dude. At least Gillespie had been fired by UK before he got busted doing pretty much the same thing.

In fact, Kelly should love Calipari. He's exactly what Huggins is: a coach who gets questionable players to play well and occasionally runs into NCAA trouble (lest we forget that Huggins got UC put on probation in 1998 for "lack of institutional control" or whatever the hell that means; could have been all the arrests his players got). So don't hate on UK dude, we're not bad people. We're just happy our team is relevant once again, and we're just wanting to see some success from one of the only good things that state produces, besides illegal drugs and incompetent politicians.