Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. When its effects are most acutely felt, those high on its hallucinogenic properties recall, with varying degrees of ignorance, a history in which problems were fewer and life was simply better. Nostalgia, as a physic, is a Siren, a seduction of half-truths and sometimes downright untruths. The temptation is so strong, its aura is at the basis of political discourse for one modern-day political party in particular, especially strengthening in the last, oh, 10 years or so.
Sentimentality’s draw knows no prisoners, though. Some are more easily beguiled than others, but everyone has bouts of longing, sometimes with fantasy attached. A segment of Arkansas football fans steeped in the far-gone SWC days, for example, still see 10 wins a year as a “should be.” Perhaps the reason I’m so drawn to sports as a journalist is because it isn’t that dissimilar from the area in which I received my degree: political science. Politicians are much like coaches, saying what they need to earn the fanatic’s admiration and trust. And the fanatics, well, they tend toward the hysterical, anyway.
Arkansas and Kentucky Are Peas in a Pod
Arkansas fans in particular have this yearning and just enough madness mixed in to be both scary and fun. Like that guy/girl you dated for a couple months in college before you realized it probably wasn’t the healthiest of relationships.
Fuel that madness with real production and watch the fun that flames forth. We see this now when it comes to Arkansas basketball fans, for sure. A program that has been good to very good for the last decade or so was trending toward greatness under Eric Musselman until last season’s ugliness. Musselman left and John Calipari, objectively one of the greatest college basketball coaches in history, chose Fayetteville over Kentucky and immediately propelled the Hogs into national-title-contention territory.
Kentucky basketball fans – perhaps the only other hoops fan base in the SEC that rivals Arkansas’ mental instability – still aren’t handling it well.
When Calipari initially left, they, by and large, stated that the Wildcats were better off without him. Calipari had, in their minds and words, maxed out. Kentucky was treading water under his watch, especially after UK lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Oakland this spring. As the university’s replacement search went along, some disillusion began to set in. The ultimate hiring of Mark Pope, a former Wildcats forward, brought mixed reactions even in the weeks after. The malcontents increased in number and have branded Calipari not only a phony, but a traitor and agitator.
Kentucky Can’t Seem To Let Go of Calipari Issues
Take, for example, the below gem of a tweet by Tristan Pharis, the editor for Kentucky’s SB Nation site “A Sea of Blue.”
In the video of the original tweet, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek re-tells – for the umpteenth time – the story of his meeting with Calipari. The details surrounding the surreptitious exchange between Yurachek and Calipari’s middle-man are played up for drama, likely heightening Pharis’ suspicion. The gist the Kentucky writer is going for, though, is that simply by meeting with Yurachek, Calipari was engaging in a breach of contract.
I’m sure Tristan is a decent guy and all, but a labor lawyer he is not. He does an admirable job of pulling a section out of Calipari’s contract in a subsequent tweet as, uh, evidence, I guess? Of course, the university didn’t bother bringing litigation against Calipari. The school wasn’t likely to bother with a counter-offer, anyway, meaning: “Thanks for everything, coach. We’ll see ya out there.”
In some ways, it’s fun to see this level of pettiness from fans (Look, I’m not going to say journalist in this case; SB Nation does not purport to be a journalistic outfit) in regards to the renewed Kentucky-Arkansas basketball rivalry. Its height was in the 1990s, perhaps before Tristan was born, but he appears to have been raised on that aforementioned nostalgia. It’s quite familiar. Most Arkansas fans, like Tristan with Kentucky it appears, didn’t go to UA-Fayetteville. Such folks, in my anecdotal experience, tend to fall prey to the most extreme partisan passions. True Believers, if you will.
Shoot, in some ways, my sheer writing of this column fans that flame. If this were seven years ago, when I was still rousing-rabble for a regular paycheck and drew both fans and haters of my work regarding Arkansas athletics, this here penning might even turn into an old-fashioned Twitter war. Nevermind Twitter isn’t nearly as fun – or harmless – as it used to be. But as one whose Arkansas fandom doesn’t really exist anymore, I still find some joy in realizing some things never change about rivalries and the ridiculous nature of sports team supporters.
Fandom Turns Into Fanaticism
Arkansas fans are just as bad, now. They go after their own players, even those they previously claimed to have loved. They have pushed back against the Black Lives Matter actions of players and went so far as this past season to spread rumors of illicit sexual acts among teammates.
The year before, criticism of star-turned-scapegoat Nick Smith got so bad that local news icon Mike Irwin issued an apology toward another former Arkansas High School Basketball legend who left the state under bad juju, a player Irwin himself piled on at the time: Malik Monk. With that kind of animus for its own, the venom spewed in online spaces about opposing teams can sometimes be just as nasty.
A real joyful bunch, huh? Is it really a shock that my disappearing fandom for the team coincided with my covering the team?
None of this is new, exactly. The medium may have changed because of the internet’s ubiquity, but ill feelings were always, at least, latent. And, hey, sometimes nostalgia makes us miss the things we hate, too. That’s the way it works. We remember the way it used to be and pine for it. Even if it’s angry. Especially if it’s angry, turns out.
***
Update on Caleb Wilson, a recruiting target of both Arkansas and Kentucky:
More coverage of Arkansas basketball from BoAS…
