Bleeding UK Big Blue: Kentucky's rural residents, its mountain people, and the citified all take Wildcats basketball personally

Sporting News, The, Nov 25, 1996 by Lonnie Wheeler

To the people of Gravel Switch and Wild Cat, from the luscious horse farms to the tapped-out coal mines,from the bends of the Ohio to the hollows of the Cumberlands, last year's NCAA basketball championship--the sixth won by the University of Kentucky--was much more than a hardwood moment. For many,if not most, Kentuckians, it was redemption. It was the restoration of honor and pride. It was the best thing that could happen.

More than any other, Kentucky is a state that defines itself through basketball. When the commonwealth looks in the mirror, it sees blue, white and LSU down by 19. In the intriguing relationship between regional peoples and national sports, Kentucky represents a unique dimension. To say that basketball is a religion in Kentucky is to be optimistic about religion.

Captivated by this cultural phenomenon, free-lance writer Lonnie Wheeler has set out on a yearlong odyssey in search of the soul of Kentucky basketball. His work will culminate in a book to be published nextfall by Simon & Schuster.

Over the course of the 1996-97 basketball season, THE SPORTING NEWS will present a series of stories based on the material gathered in Wheeler's search. The following article is the first in the series.

Thursday was warm. Thursday was a festival. little dome tents formed a linear settlement that stretched from both ticket windows out to the Avenue of Champions and around the corners. Their utterly contented occupants, squatters dressed in blue and white, tossed footballs, shared pizza, gathered around portable televisions and caught naps on the Memorial Coliseum grass, right under the ample nose of Adolph Rupp's historical marker. As the October afternoon drifted amiably beyond 70 degrees, the happy campers entertained periodic visitations from the colony's original settler, a chesty middle-aged veteran and former plumber named Wally Clark, whose ancient roots traced all the way back to late summer. In 38 curious days of idle purpose, Clark had become legendary. He had waited longer than anyone for tickets to the University of Kentucky's first public basketball practice.

Clark's excess--everyone knew he could have saved himself three weeks and still been first in line--was so conspicuous that some folks could not let it go unanswered. Prankish students jumped on the roof of his Ford Fiesta camper one late night and slid down onto the hood. Others taunted him about getting a job which Clark doesn't have because of a disability from a stroke he suffered six years ago. After five weeks of privileged parking, he had to move his camper by order of the Lexington police, who figured that the streets around the Coliseum might turn into a KOA as Big Blue Madness drew nearer. But all of that, and the boredom, was a toll that Clark would have gladly paid twice over for his Wildcats--and for his celebrity. On Thursday, Madness Eve, others in line noticed that Wally's walk had a little strut to it. He passed out UK buttons and paused, adjusting his sunglasses, for the various TV cameras that recorded his moment.

The cameras had come to the Coliseum not only for the Madness vigil, but also for the Basketball Media Day activities on the concourse. Inside, soft drinks were being served and three walls of curtains had been erected for Rick Pitino's preseason news conference. A few minutes after the appointed hour, the coach emerged through the front curtain, bouncy end dapper as usual in a striped shirt with a bright white collar and tie. Demonstrating that despite his recent fame and outrageous popularity he is still a coach first and a personality after that, Pitino went straight to the scouting report on Clemson, which, in four weeks, would be the first opponent in Kentucky's defense of its 1996 NCAA championship.

He talked on, informatively, about his new big men--he has never had genuine pivot people on the order of freshman Jamaal Magloire and little-used sophomore Nazr Mohammed in his seven previous seasons at Kentucky--and about needing three NBA draft picks these days to win an NCAA title, implying, roundabout, that Ron Mercer and Derek Anderson put his team two-thirds of the way there. "I think Ron Mercer is getting ready to bust out and have an incredible year," Pitino said, playing to the imaginations in his audience. And then somebody asked about Wally Clark.

"We've gotten to know Wally very well here. He showers and shaves here, comes in in the morning with no shirt on and has his coffee. I tell people back home (in New York) that he has camped here for 38 days, and they ask, 'Why 38 days? Couldn't he have done it with 20 days?' l say, `Yes.' They say, `Then why did he do it?' I say, `I can't answer that. You'll have to ask Wally.'" Pitino then slips back through the curtain, out of sight and reach.

Wally has been asked that, of course, and his answer is specific. He was on emission. Starting in 1989 and four times after that, a man named Robert Vallandingham was first in line, with his family, for what was then called Midnight Madness. The problem was that the Vallandinghams were from New Albany, Ind. Wally took that personally--which is precisely how Kentuckians, on the whole, take their basketball.