The day the Kentucky Wildcats football coach met the future King of England
Quick hitters from a coronation:
21. King Charles III. The U.K.’s new monarch, who ascended to the British throne last week after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, once had a memorable interaction with then-University of Kentucky football coach Fran Curci.
20. Sampling American football. On Oct. 22, 1977, the then-28-year-old Prince of Wales attended the college football game between Curci’s Wildcats and Coach Vince Dooley’s Georgia Bulldogs in Athens while visiting the U.S.
19. Planning for a prince. “Vince Dooley said, ‘Fran, we are going to have the Prince (on the field) at halftime,” Curci recalled Friday. Dooley told Curci each head coach would bring a player to meet the Prince and a gift to present to him.
18. Art Still. Halftime arrived with Kentucky leading 10-0. Dooley brought linebacker Jeff Lewis, a Rhodes Scholarship candidate, to meet the United Kingdom’s future monarch; Curci brought All-America defensive end Art Still. The 6-foot-7, 253-pound Still made an impression on Prince Charles. Says Curci: “The Prince says to Art, ‘My, you are a big fellow.’”
17. The gifts. Georgia’s Dooley presented Prince Charles with an autographed football. Curci said he gave the future English king “a University of Kentucky shirt. A good one.”
16. Lasting memory. The day the U.K.’s future king came to watch UK play is warmly recalled by Curci. Kentucky dusting Georgia 33-0 en route to a 10-1 season helped with that. “It was fun,” Curci said. “It’s always fun when you are winning.”
15. A family tradition. On Oct. 19, 1957, King Charles III’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was in a box at the 50-yard line at Maryland to see the Terrapins upset No. 14 North Carolina 21-7. While on a six-day, state visit to the United States, “the Queen specifically requested the chance to see her first American football game,” the Washington Post reported.
14. Scott Frost. How badly did Nebraska (1-2) want to fire the ex-Cornhuskers quarterback as its head coach? According to USA Today’s Steve Berkowitz, the university owes Frost a $16.2 million contract buyout. Had Nebraska waited until Oct. 1 to fire Frost, the buyout would have been reduced to $8.125 million.
13. Mark Stoops. According to CBSSports.com’s Dennis Dodd, the Kentucky head coach should be Nebraska’s number one target to replace Frost.
12. Leave UK? After a tumultuous summer in which Stoops seemed unhappy with Kentucky’s stance toward the use of NIL collectives in recruiting and the John Calipari-initiated “basketball school” dust-up occurred, one wonders if the Wildcats football coach is more open to other jobs than he has been in the past.
11. Evaluating the Nebraska job. On the plus side, the Cornhuskers have a great football fan base and access to Big Ten resources. On the debit side, Nebraska has gone 20-39 since the start of the 2017 season and does not have much of a natural recruiting base.
10. Evaluating the Kentucky job. UK has gone 42-23 since the start of the 2017 season. Kentucky is much closer to Stoops’ Ohio recruiting roots than is Nebraska. Stoops should be very reticent to give up the UK coaching job that he has turned into a good one for anything less than a program with a clear avenue to compete for national championships — which Nebraska no longer is.
9. Marshall 26, Notre Dame 21. The Fighting Irish paid the Thundering Herd $1.25 million to travel to South Bend and beat them.
8. Georgia Southern 45, Nebraska 42. The Cornhuskers paid the Eagles $1.423 million to travel to Lincoln and beat them.
7. Appalachian State 17, Texas A&M 14. The Aggies paid the Mountaineers $1.5 million to travel to College Station and beat them.
6. Kenny Walker. The former Kentucky Wildcats star and New York Knicks forward recently got a happy surprise in a call from Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Bachman.
5. Sue Bird. Bachman told Walker that retiring WNBA legend Bird, 41, had idolized him when she was a little girl growing up on Long Island and the NBA’s 1989 Slam Dunk Contest champion was playing for the Knicks.
4. “A pleasant surprise.” “I did not expect (to hear that) from one of the best women’s players to ever play the game,” Walker said Sunday night. “You look at (Bird’s) career, she’s probably had as good a career as any women’s basketball player I can think of. So I was very pleasantly surprised to hear she used to come to (Madison Square) Garden and just (watch) me in warm-ups.”
3. One up on MJ. Knowing that a youthful Bird held him in such high esteem means “I can brag to my family and friends that Sue Bird admired me more than Michael Jordan,” Walker said. “To know that I had that kind of effect on a young lady, I think that is awesome.”
2. Football school or basketball school? On the issue of whether the University of Kentucky should be considered more a football or basketball school, Walker — the second-leading scorer (2,080 career points) in UK men’s hoops history — has a strong view.
1. An everything school. “I hate that people are trying to say that (UK) is one or the other. Pull for everybody,” Walker said. “I want every (Kentucky team) to do well.”
This story was originally published September 12, 2022 at 11:31 AM.
