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None More Loyal As Big Blue Supporters
Herald-Leader Now Writing About Fan's Behavior
The fans.
Once again. University of Kentucky athletic fans have come under fire from some media outlet. Why?
Are UK fans NOT supposed to root for their favorite teams? Are UK fans the only ones who are over whelmingly loyal, supportive, or outspoken about their teams?
Are UK fans outrageous in their behavior toward their own school, or an opponent?
Kentucky fans are supposed to root the Wildcats home. UK fans are not any more outlandish about UK teams than any other Division I school.
Kentucky fans are also more generous in their behavior, as a whole group, toward an opponent, than are many other fans, as a group, toward UK teams.
Jim Griesch
Cats' Pause Columnist
Want some examples? Louisville, Tennessee, Louisiana State, Florida. Alabama, now Kansas.
A recent Lexington Herald-Leader telephone survey indicates that almost half of 807 people surveyed in and around Fayette County agree that UK sports are overemphasized. Wow! Just 807 people?
Let's see. Commonwealth Stadium holds between 58.000 and 59.000. Rupp Arena can pick in at least 24,203. Who. or what are the 807 people the pollsters, KPC/Research, of Charlotte. N.C., talked to?
Were they winos promised another drink? Were they graduates of some blue-blooded Ivy League school where athletic teams are almost as well known as school poets? Were they Middle Eastern terrorists looking to throw a little more garbage into the American lifestyle?
Who knows.
The important thing to remember about the poll is that it is just one more in a long line of little digs at the average Kentucky sports fan. The academics side of UK has begun to receive its shots. You know the story... The schools is zero, academically, while the basketball team gets everything... The school is an athletic factory for the pros... Wrong, cloaca brain.
Look at the rosters of professional ball teams. In the National Basketball Association, UK has only six active players. They are: Kevin Grevey, Rick Robey, Kyle Macy, Melvin Tur-pin. Dirk Minniefield and Sam Bowie.
The National Football League has just six players active at present (mid-December, 1985). They are: Derrick Ramsey, tight end, New England Patriots; Art Still, defensive end, Kansas City Chiefs; Jim Kovach, linebacker, San Francisco '49ers, Jeff Van Note, center, Atlanta Falcons; Jerry Blanton, linebacker, Kansas City Chiefs, Joker Phillips, receiver, Washington Redskins.
Now, if 12 professional athletes from a school with an average enrollment of 22,000 is an "athletic factory," what in the name of Pete Rozelle are the pro teams doing to fdl out their rosters.
Actually, UK fans are no different than fans of other institutions of higher learning. UK fans want their teams to win. They yell for their teams, laugh when they win, and cry when they lose.
Sure. UK basketball fans have had a special relationship with the teams of Adolph Rupp, Joe Hall, and now Eddie Sutton.
Consistant winning breeds such relationships. And, this in no way speaks of the current NCAA investigation into boosterism at UK spawned by a newspaper in Lexington.
Because of the special identification of wanting to be associated with winning and winners, UK basketball is the darling of not just graduates of UK, or those who attended UK for at least a trip to the bathroom.
UK basketball is special to many people in Kentucky who have never even been inside Rupp Arena, much less Memorial Coliseum.
Even radio and TV fans from across the nation who have never even been in Kentucky root for UK, because of the media exposure and the need to associate with a "winner."
But, the Herald-Leader poll indicates there is unrest among the legions of the loyal. Quoting the copyrighted story of Dec. 15, 1985. the poll "found a strong sentiment for putting more emphasis on academics at the school."
Fine.
In athletics, that might mean having 100 percent graduation rates, instead of 95 percent in basketball. That might mean getting 20 football players on the All-SEC All-Academic team instead of 10.
That might mean doubling the $23 million planned for upgrading the robotics program, part of the perks the state okayed for getting Toyota to put a plant in near-by Georgetown.
That would also include NOT, repeat NOT, having the Council on Higher Public Education pull the law, medical, dental, and other professional schools . out from under UK control.
That would also include keeping the state's community colleee under UK auspices.
What the Herald-Leader poll does is heighthen the growing nationwide concern about education in America. The story states this fact.
What the story does not say is that it is just another attempt to jump on a bandwagon.
Make that two bandwagons.
It has become popular in America to put down college athletics as a self-perprtrating, greedy, corrupt, and narcistic feature of Americana.
It has also become popular to put the knock on UK athletic teams.
In illustrating its poll, the Herald-Leader's charts show that more high school grads (or less educated), are less inclined to agree that there is overemphasis on UK sports than are those with a college degree. The poll also shows that those very much interested in UK sports more strongly disagree with that assumption than those who are not interested in UK sports.
How odd!
Of course a poll shows that. Those who follow closely one school's teams would certainly disagree that his (or her) recreational time is spent in following something unpopular. What are the interests of those who don't care for UK sports?
Even the high school-college education breakdown is not that much of a surprise.
Every school has a certain amount of "subway alumni." UK gets a lot of emotional support from a large segment of the state's less affluent. The small farmer around the state is a big UK fan. So are coal miners, stock clerks, youngsters whose parents follow UK. and the like.
No surprises there.
Unfortunately, there are some nagging little areas of doubt about a few fans.
Recently, the Courier-Journal in Louisville ran a story that indicted that some students have become disenchanted with their own athletic teams.
There is a little bit of truth here. In recent years, the student sections in Commonwealth Stadium have had some empty areas in the upper reaches of the second deck.
That's unfortunate, in a way. because football coach Jerry Caiborne has put a higher degree of emphasis on his players' academic standing, than have some more recent coaches. Claiborne's attitude ought to get MORE RESPECT from the non-athletic student body.
Last year, during the 1984-85 basketball season, the average attendance figure in Rupp Arena dropped to 22,923. That represents a drop of more than 800 per game from the previous year, and the first time that average attendance dropped below the 23.000 mark for the first time since Rupp Aren's innaugeral season. 1976-77. when attendance averaged 22,323.
Of course, Syracuse, playing in a domed football stadium, is the only other school to show such averages. Any other team in the world would like to average 22.923 for a season.
A few years ago, UK outdrew about eight complete conferences. Maybe loss of interest among fans is a relative idea.
But, it is true that attendance did lag in basketball and football.
Last year, The Cats' Pause published a letter-to-the-editor from a man. an ex-sportswriter from Minnesota, that was very interesting.
He pointed out that UK teams are no better than many others around the country now. The writer pointed out that UK teams seemed to do this or that, but that Kentucky basketball was still special. The reason: the fans.
He said that UK fans have been extremely loyal in their undying support for UK teams, and how they also expect the UK teams to do well.
He said, in short, that it was (is) the UK fans who still make UK special.
That's a nice compliment from an "outsider."
So, why is the Herald-Leader writing about overemphasis? Why did the Courier-Journal talk about student dissatisfaction?
Why did Jock Sutherland begin his personal brand of garbage attack on UK fans last spring, and continue this fall?
Perhaps there is some line of thinking that goes like this: "If we can break the hold UK sports has on its fans, we can take the programs down to our level."
Why else would someone, or some group, want to persecute UK's fans? Why else would the above mentioned want to try to create a chasm between the school, its teams, and the fans?
There are some ironies involved in all of this.
For years, UK football sold out in Stoll Field (36,000) before moving into Commonwealth Stadium. Those were during years that were not great for football. Even with constant 3-7 to 5-5 years, during years a lack of super highways across Kentucky made travel much more difficult for the fans to get to the games, fans filled the place.
It is ironic, too, that the assualt on UK and its fans comes at a time when other schools, even within the borders of Kentucky, are gearing up in drives to recruit, create, and entice fens.
Perhaps UK and its fans are just now beginning to "pay" for years of loyalty.
The price to choice seats in Commonwealth and Rupp is cheap compared with buying a "box" in Freedom Hall, where certain U of L fans get carte blanche to EVERY event at the state-owned and controlled Fairgrounds.
No four seats at UK go for $25,000, the price of one of those "executive suits," which is a gouging of first order.
Other schools have their own unique arrangements. Oklahoma has a "side of beef club which grants certain gratuities to the lucky cattleman who donates so much in steaks and rump roasts for Sooner teams. Others in the plains area have similar deals.
The Hilltopper Hundred Club in Bowling Green, an arm of the Western Kentucky athletics scene, is no less loyal, but certainly not as expensive as the "executive suit" plan at U of L.
Over the years, UK fans have been polite to the oposition.
Only in the last few years, when UK fans have received garbage treatment at other schools, have UK fans lost some of that gracious demeanor which set Memorial Coliseum apart from the rest of the college basketball jungle.
At Notre Dame, where the noise and the garbage throwing never stops, the student body is applauded on national TV.
At Duke and some other Atlantic Coast Conference schools, where the unified use of cute obscenities is an art form, the national media does feature stories about the fun and creative atmosphere such "pranks" generate.
Rowdyism is rampant whenever UK shows up at many other SEC sites.
The student body at LSU ought to have to wear plastic garbage bags to gain entrance.
Nobody goes to Florida games, unless UK is in town. The memory of seeing one kid, perhaps hopped up on ex-lax, dancing a jig on the sidelines during a win over UK a couple of years ago, is still vivid. He was doing his own thing, and when he noticed the cameras on him, went into a frenzied act, pointing his fingers like guns, shooting at everything.
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