Billy Reed: A Basketball Mad State

My friend Billy Reed — who happens to also be the dean of Kentucky’s sportswriters — wrote an incredible piece on Kentucky basketball last week for Si.com prior to the UK/UofL showdown.  I share it with you here to demonstrate the kind of writing I aspire to — someday:

Outside my home here in Louisville, all hell is breaking loose. Insults and predictions are dropping like bombs. Rational people are fleeing bars and restaurants in search of sanctuary. Offices have become battlegrounds, families are being torn apart, and minor events such as weddings are being reorganized. I now know what Edward R. Murrow must have felt like when he was reporting about the siege of London during World War II.

In more than a half century of covering basketball in Kentucky, I thought I had just about seen it all. Heck, even though I was just a kid in 1955, I remember the flag over the state capital building in Frankfort being lowered to half-mast because Georgia Tech had ended the Kentucky Wildcats’ 129-game home winning streak (still the national record). That was my first clue that basketball wasn’t just a game in my native state.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t prepared for the madness that surrounds me this week. I guess I always knew that Kentucky and Louisville would someday meet in the Final Four. But I never dreamed that it would cause all serious work in the Commonwealth to grind to a virtual standstill. I never dreamed that Anthony Davis’ brow would get more radio and TV time than anything since Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier for the first time in 1971.

To put it into context, this is Super Bowl week in Kentucky. Even folks who only have a casual interest in hoops — yes, we do have some of those — are suddenly expressing opinions and making bets and generally acting like fools.

Naturally, the national media has been in town this week, trying to ferret out basketball crazies to interview. This makes me nervous because when they find somebody like the guy who has the UK logo in his glass eye, it doesn’t exactly reflect well on us. But we can’t deny the obvious. You may have heard about the two senior citizens in Georgetown, Ky., ages 69 and 72, who almost came to blows arguing about Louisville and Kentucky during their dialysis treatment.

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