“You lose nothing when you fight for a cause… In my mind the losers are those who don’t have a cause they care about.” – Muhammad Ali
Growing up, my childhood was mostly consumed with the love of University of Louisville Cardinal sports. My father, The Observer, was an alumnus and a football and basketball season ticket holder so I knew the Red and Black. I also had a brush with the above wordsmith The Greatest, as a young Louisvillian.
Dad served on the Kentucky Derby Committee at times and had invites to the Governor’s Brunch on Derby Day. My very first Saturday in May, Pops got me close enough to the champ that he held me as a babe and kissed me on the cheek, or so the urban legend goes.
For an urban, working-class city that born the greatest fighter to ever step in a ring and a hometown university whose sports teams have had to scrap and claw for everything they have ever achieved, Louisvillians know something about fighting.
And when there’s an injustice lurking in the world, you gotta put the gloves on and throw down.
I personally don’t know how many times UofL Athletic Director Josh Heird has been in an actual fight in his life, but now is the chance for him to show what he’s got. He’s been having to withstand a pretty solid barrage of blows from the fan base recently over what may or may not have happened in Jeff Brohm’s office over the contract extension conversation. He now needs to punch back, and there’s no better target than the folks up I-65 North in Indy.
The fan base has been the punching bag for the NCAA over the years, with the knockout blow coming almost a decade ago when Mary Cartwright’s morally repugnant Infraction Appeals Committee ordered the vacation of the 2012 Final Four and 2013 national title, along with 123 wins. One could argue all day the depth and scope of the alleged infractions and whether or not there should have been a punishment. Most of us already have. The motives of the actors involved and if there was an ultimate boogeyman behind the scenes pulling the strings still haunt Card fans to this day, but what’s done is done. UofL did not get a recruiting advantage out of all the balderdash, no criminal charges arose after law enforcement investigated, yet the stupid asterisk hangs on in the record books for dear life.
The NCAA plays its favorites. That’s undeniable. Michigan actually got advantages over opponents on the field with their cheating scandal and got fined a drop in the bucket, no titles stripped. The Tar Heels’ academic fraud embarrassment led to no major sanctions. The evil perpetrated in Happy Valley and East Lansing is too reprehensible to contemplate, yet even the Nittany Lions’ wins were all restored after settlement.
For too long, every patron to the Yum! Center has had to look up at the rafters and see the embarrassment that is the atrocity of the #1 Coaches Poll mistake. Nobody wearing red claims that and rivals feed off it. It’s got to go. Any attorney with a pulse should be able to bring home the real banners to Titletown.
There’s a lot of blood in the water on Floyd Street right now and the sharks are circling. The PR disaster that was leaked about Jeff’s contract extension soap opera can be remedied with closure on that and with not just lip service or procrastination on getting the banners back. There’s been a lot of talk coming from Josh over the past few years. He makes almost a million dollars a year. I think it’s fair to ask him to multitask these two things and get them done. His legacy is at stake.
We all saw the Luke’s heroic performance and Trezl’s slam to cap off the onslaught to end the first half, Burke’s body foul on Peyton’s layup and Chane’s grown man rebound in the second half. The magical run of the Infrareds were burned into our eyes and that cannot be deleted. Luke even sued and got his individual award back.
The 2013 banner is there for the taking. You, Josh, need to fight for it now.