Misplaced Kentucky Fans In Louisville

One sure bet is that all the blue jackets and caps with the oversized K’s around town will disappear faster than they came out of mothballs if the University of Louisville basketball team beats Kentucky.

The observer has difficulty understanding why a native-born Louisvillian would be a UK fan, adopting something so foreign to the local culture. One can almost tolerate the transplants, people moving here for family reasons, but not long. It’s not natural to live in Louisville and favor Kentucky.

When the observer was growing up in Central Kentucky, people in that area really didn’t know much about the city. That was probably Louisville’s fault because the leadership never any effort to educate the state in those days. As a result, the city has for decades had to fight ignorance, scrapping for every dollar its gets from Frankfort, despite providing a disproportionate amount of the state’s revenue.

The out-in-the-state love for Kentucky basketball stems from in part from a lack of other distractions. The mostly rural state is dotted by small towns whose only claim to anything significant is the university. They engulf themselves in anything and everything Kentucky, without a clue about how they are perceived outside the state’s borders or in Metro Louisville

So how to explain the Louisville-born UK fans. The most plausible explanation is that a good percentage of them are the offspring of people who moved here from elsewhere, never able to fully adjust to city life. They never questioned their parents or realized there were other options.

Many wanted to leave home for college and UK was the affordable option. You’ll find a lot of them in St. Matthews, for example. Many are bandwagon people who got caught up in the Lexington school’s national basketball championships and will never get over them (equating the late Cawood Ledford with the voice of God).

Others are so enmeshed that they actually embrace a myth that UK fans outnumber U of L fans in their community, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Their minds are closed, don’t confuse them with facts.

Regardless of how it occurred, there are too many of them in Louisville. Why there is so much animosity, even hate, between the two groups of fans is another story for another day. But it will be impossible to deny which university owns Louisville when the $237 million basketball palace opens in all its splendor and magnificence on the riverfront, just a few months from now.

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UK Players Stomp On Card Logo

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U of L-UK: Pick The Score

By Paul Sykes

By now you’ve have a chance to read the hype, inside information, comparison analysis and position breakdowns for the big game. You can rattle off the starters in the Louisville secondary forwards and backwards, and probably give an off-the-cuff speech on the series.

Or, you might be new to Card Game and just want to try your luck. If that’s the case, welcome, and read, comment and bug Charlie all you want…

But can you pick the final score?

Win this T-shirt

Get out your thinking caps, mull over the strengths and weaknesses of each squad, and quiz your mailman. Repeat and rinse. Then, go to the Comments section and post it.

For the record, I’m going 24-21 Cats over Cards. Before you start hurling rotten tomatoes and leaving stray cats in my front yard, know full well that nothing would please me more than seeing UofL pull the upset. I just don’t see it “in the Cards” this year.

Charlie is providing a free T-shirt to the winner — the front of which says, “The only thing I hate more than Kentucky basketball,’ and the back “is Kentucky fans.”

Good luck!

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Dressing For Success

Jo Lynne, a University of Louisville fan, leaves little doubt about how she regards fans of the Cardinals’ upcoming football opponent in Lexington. The new look was unveiled at U of L’s opening game. (U of L Card Game Photo)

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