ATLANTA — To appreciate what this will be like in the Commonwealth, think back to October of 2000, when our town was similarly divided, when everywhere you walked the citizens made open and loud declarations: orange and blue on one side of the street, pinstripes and interlocking letters on the other.
Then, rewind the tape a little farther to the late 1970s and early 1980s, to those years when the Rangers and Islanders would turn Greater New York into a more rabid hockey town than Montreal or Moscow, take out your calculator, and multiply the two of them.
Then, fast-forward to a time in the next couple of years — for kicks, let’s say 2014 — when the Jets and the Giants survive the gauntlet of conference playoffs and square off in the Super Bowl. Grab the calculator. Factor that into the equation.
Add it all together?
VIDEO: COACH, PLAYER REACTIONS
You might get a sense of what life’s going to be like in the state of Kentucky this week. See, we care about our sports and our teams, but as passionately as we follow them … well, they’re just a little bit different in Kentucky.
“They’re crazy,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said yesterday, after his Wildcats were done toying with Baylor, 82-70, earning UK’s second straight trip to the Final Four, somehow making the word “crazy” seem less pejorative and more praiseworthy than it was ever intended to be.
Saturday, after guiding his Louisville Cardinals to a 72-68 win over Florida in Phoenix, Rick Pitino — who has coached both schools — put it a little more colorfully: “There will be people in Kentucky that will have a nervous breakdown if they lose to us. They’ve got to put fences on bridges. There will be people consumed by Louisville.”
This will be a fan-driven phenomenon, of course. Of Kentucky’s rotation players, only Darius Miller is a native son, from Maysville. On Louisville, the only Kentuckians against Florida were Zach Price and Elisha Justice, who played a minute apiece. But players and coaches enter this rivalry knowing that it’s not only bigger than them, and older than them, it’s beyond them.
“I’ve been at Kentucky three years,” Calipari said. “I’ve said it all along: We play Louisville once a year, we’re not in the same league. Why do you guys get all worked up? And then they go crazy. It’s not …”
He shook his head. Beyond him. Beyond all of them.
“It’s just a ball game we have to play.”
Yes. Just a small distraction that’ll flood Bourbon Street with thousands of citizens of the Bourbon State, where Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark and Heaven’s Hill will run freely in the French Quarter Friday and then Kentucky’s other leading export, basketball, will rule the Superdome Saturday.
Duke and North Carolina never did meet in a Final Four, though they made it together in 1991. LSU and Alabama playing a BCS final shows that some of football’s bloodiest rivalries — Auburn-Bama, or Ohio State-Michigan — could meet. And even Kentucky and Louisville — which spent years ignoring each other — were nearly forced to play in the 1975 Final Four before John Wooden’s final UCLA team took them both out.
So we’ve never seen anything like this, really, because as fierce as most of the rivalries we know are, these guys are neighbors. Maybe this is what the old Dodgers-Giants rivalry used to be about, but that’s 55 years gone now.
This is what faces Calipari this week, and he isn’t going to much like it. He has the best team, the more prominent program. He tried to be conciliatory toward the school — “The city of Louisville drives our state and the University of Louisville drives that city” — and about his frenemy who coaches the Cardinals — “friendly acquaintances,” is how he described his relationship with Pitino though he quipped, “we don’t send each other Christmas cards.”
Pitino also tried to muffle the din — “To me it’s nonsense; I never got into the Mets-Red Sox or Yankees-Red Sox, I just appreciated being a Yankee fan, and I appreciate the excellence.”
But make no mistake: A win over his former school and his friendly acquaintance would be a capstone on a career that’s been defined by little-engine-that-could surprises.
Kentucky-Louisville? With all those chips on the table?
Can we tip tomorrow?
Maybe make it a best-of-seven?