How comfortable are Kentucky fans about attending Wildcats games this school year?
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Coffee with Cal
University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari is hosting a weekly show on Facebook Live called “Coffee with Cal” in which he interviews influential individuals from the worlds of sports, media, politics and beyond. The shows are designed to benefit COVID-19 relief and draw attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. Click below to read the Herald-Leader’s stories recapping previous shows.
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The legal system has temporary insanity. Could sports be entering a period of temporary sanity?
Fans — not known for sober and prudent judgment — sound willing to pause their fanaticism because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Recent conversations with Kentucky fans suggested there is caution about attending football and basketball games in 2020-21, assuming there will be games that fans can attend.
“I don’t think I’ll be comfortable at all going into a crowd till there is a vaccine,” said Ray Ball, owner of Ball Homes LLC and a UK Athletics donor. “I would not want to go into a crowd in the fall.”
High-profile attorney and UK fan Darryl Isaacs acknowledged missing sports. “But in relationship to people getting sick and going out of business and dying, you’ve got to put it in perspective,” he said. “There’s more important things than sports right now.”
UK’s student body president, Courtney Wheeler, said that safety is the No. 1 concern of her peers.
“If they cannot do it safely, then students will decide not to go,” she said. “I think if they mandate masks, if they temperature check before going into Kroger Field, it will help students feel more secure and safe while they are at the game.”
Wheeler said a lesser chance of social distancing in Rupp Arena made attending basketball games more problematic.
As of May 21, season-ticket sales for UK football were down about 19 percent from the final total of a year ago, said Guy Ramsey, the athletics department’s director of strategic communications. But the 27,113 season tickets sold as of late May was more than UK expected given the uncertainty about a 2020 season and the financial strains caused by the pandemic, he added.
New football season tickets sold were at 1,650. Last season saw about 3,470 new season tickets sold, Ramsey said.
No figures are available yet on basketball ticket sales.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear ordered that masks be worn in public for the next 30 days beginning on Friday. If that order were to extend into the fall, fans sounded willing to wear masks at games.
Some view masks as a political statement, but not UK fan J.J. Ogbogu, a former football and basketball player for Lexington Catholic. When asked if he’d wear a mask, Ogbogu, 22, said it was wise to follow medical advice.
“We’re not the experts,” he said. “I think the thing everyone should do is listen to what they’re saying because they specialize in it and they’re studying what’s going on. If they simply say to wear a mask, who are you to say, ‘Oh no, we don’t need a mask.’ What makes you more qualified than them?”
Paul Bimschleger, 90, is past president of the Bluegrass Kiwanis Club. He said he wants to support Kentucky teams. But . . .
“If everyone will wear a mask, I would look favorably upon that,” he said of attending games.
Murray State psychology professor Dan Wann, who specializes in fan behavior, suggested something that might sound illogical: the caution expressed showed how rabid UK fans were.
“Some people would say, ‘well, if they’re so concerned about health, maybe they’re not that big of fans,’” Wann said. “No. I think that’s actually testament to their fandom. That they’re saying they’re willing to do those things if that’s what it takes to get to watch Kentucky play.”
Cal’s idea
John Calipari’s proposal to launch a program to help minorities gain access and opportunities to careers in athletic administration gained momentum on Friday. That’s when the UK coach had a long conversation with Marc Morial, who is president of the National Urban League.
“Marc Morial gave an all-hands-on-deck commitment to participate,” said P.G. Peeples, president and CEO of the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County.
Calipari initially called his idea an internship program. During this developmental phase, it’s become what Peeples called “leadership training.”
Internships generally involve college students, Peeples said. The leadership training will be aimed at getting graduate students into fellowship programs.
The idea is to build “future leaders to take over roles in areas where historically there’s been a lot of under-representation in the athletic departments,” Peeples said.
The hope is to start the program at UK and other schools across the country in August or September. Until then, there are a lot of details to work out, Peeples said.
“Cal says he’s got a lot of coaches to buy in, to support it at their institutions,” Peeples said. Calipari is heading the funding for the program at UK. “He’s asking other coaches to fund it at their respective institutions.”
Peeples, who participated in the call with Morial, said that Calipari planned another Zoom meeting later Friday with coaches.
Morial pledged the support of Urban League chapters elsewhere in the country.
Calipari is also seeking corporate funding. One possible sponsor is Nike, Peeples said.
The program is expected to be the topic of discussion on the Kentucky coach’s “Coffee With Cal” Facebook show Monday morning.
“I see a lot of potential,” Peeples said. “Right now is the perfect time in our country to be doing something like this to deal with systemic issues of under-representation.”
The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others this year have increased awareness of racial inequality, Peeples said. “I just think the country is ripe right now for change.”
Well wishes . . .
To former UK Coach Joe B. Hall. For those concerned about how he is doing, Hall recently moved to a senior living facility in Lexington.
Hall, 91, had been living with a daughter, Kathy, and her husband, Mike Summers, in Louisville.
Respect?
Kentucky added two teams from Conference USA — UAB and Marshall — to its 2020-21 schedule. But UK will not play the C-USA team two hours down the road in Bowling Green.
Western Kentucky had been talking to UK about a game for about two months. The eventual dates for the games against UAB (Dec. 6) and Marshall (Dec. 29) were considered.
Why didn’t the game come about? Maybe it was a matter of respect. Western Kentucky has had an 8-4 record against teams from Power Five conferences in the past three seasons. That includes two victories over Arkansas and one each over West Virginia, Wisconsin and Purdue.
Western Kentucky returns four starters from a team that had a 20-10 record last season. The returnees include Lexington native Taveion Hollingsworth, who has scored 1,494 points for the Hilltoppers. Overall, Western will return players who have scored 5,356 points on the Division I level.
By contrast, Kentucky lost its top six scorers from last season (and eight of the top nine). The exception among the top nine is Keion Brooks Jr., who scored 138 points. Transfers Davion Mintz (637) and Olivier Sarr (664) boost UK’s total to 1,453 points.
With a schedule that already includes Kansas, Notre Dame, UCLA and Georgia Tech plus a Big 12 opponent to be named later, maybe Kentucky believed playing Western Kentucky could wait for another season.
Rex
Former Kentucky star Rex Chapman was the guest on a recent episode of “Knuckleheads,” a show co-hosted by former NBA players Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles on The Players’ Tribune website.
When asked to name the top five Kentucky players of all time, Chapman said Jamal Mashburn had to be No. 1 on the list. He added Kenny Walker, Anthony Davis and Dan Issel.
The fifth spot, which Chapman said he reserved for a point guard, was a challenge. He settled on Rajon Rondo and John Wall as co-No. 5s. “Both were freaky good,” he said.
When asked what he bought after receiving his first NBA paycheck, Chapman said, “A new red 560SL Mercedes-Benz.” It was the “gaudiest” car, he added. “I was almost embarrassed to drive it.”
Chapman explained why he wore No. 3. He saw the musician Prince wearing that number in a youth basketball team photo. “I stuck with it,” Chapman said.
Happy birthday
To Carlos Toomer. He turned 48 on Thursday. . . . To Cam’Ron Fletcher. He turned 19 on Friday. . . . To Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He turns 22 on Sunday (today). . . . To Bernard Cote. He turns 38 on Sunday (today). . . . To Brennan Canada. He turns 20 on Wednesday.
This story was originally published July 12, 2020 at 8:16 AM.
