Treating Others with Respect Even During Your Team’s Troubled Times.

Column by John Herndon, 110forChrist.com

I am a Kentucky Wildcat fan and I feel for Mark Pope.

I don’t feel for him  because I agree with an overly vocal portion of the Big Blue Nation that Pope can’t coach and is doomed to fail at the school that is recognized as college basketball’s all-time wins leader. Let’s just say that I saw some of his Brigham Young teams and liked what I saw.

And I also believe that it’s not fair to judge any coach on just two seasons of work, seasons which have been marked more by injuries than NCAA Tournament wins. But even though the Kentucky locker room has resembled a M*A*S*H unit the last two years, there have been highlights – the wins over Duke and Gonzaga first year, winning at Arkansas the second and sweeping the regular-season series from Tennessee both times.

The naysayers like to focus on the blowout losses in Nashville (Alabama, Vanderbilt and Gonzaga), not getting out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament and not being able to bring in highly-rated recruits. 

Whether those criticisms are permanently valid can’t be determined in just two years, especially given the overhaul of college basketball these days. I want Pope, one of my favorites on UK’s 1996 NCAA championship team, to succeed in a big way. Whether he will be ultra-successful remains to be seen.

Yet, I feel for almost anyone working in major college basketball these days. It’s changing. It’s changing so fast that I hesitated on posting this column. The idea for this column has  been percolating in my mind at least since February but the landscape keeps shifting so much that I thought it might be obsolete before I finished typing.

And, in reality, the team that plays at Rupp Arena these days is not playing college basketball. The same can be said for the KFC Yum! Center, Pauley Pavilion, Cameron Indoor Stadium, The Dean Dome or the Allen Fieldhouse. It can be said for almost any Power Four program.

The college basketball game that I grew up loving is no more. It’s professional basketball without the constraints and stability of the NBA. That saddens me because I have so many great college basketball memories, most dealing with the Kentucky Wildcats.

The first team I remember was Rupp’s Runts in 1966. I developed a penchant for homegrown talent soon afterwards when Mike Casey, from Shelby County, the next county over, was starring for the Wildcats and was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He would later become a friend.

I was there at Anderson County High School the night they stopped the game so Adolph Rupp could get a seat to watch Jimmy Dan Conner, who he was recruiting. Coach Rupp retired, but Jimmy Dan became the captain of Joe Hall’s national runnerup team in 1975. Like many in the Bluegrass, my heart sank when they lost to UCLA.

I was there when Kentucky defeated Wisconsin in the first game at Rupp Arena. I watched on TV as Bryan Station grad Jack Givens poured in 41 points leading UK past Duke for the 1978 national championship.

I loved The Unforgettables, especially Kentucky natives John Pelphrey, Deron Feldhaus and Richie Farmer. I counted the 1996 team the greatest I have ever seen. Louisville’s Derek Anderson and Lebanon’s Anthony Epps were indispensable cogs in that machine. I rejoiced    when Lexington native Cameron Mills gave the Wildcats the lead against the Dukies two  years later on their way to another national crown.

Even Kentucky’s 2012 national champs, a team loaded with players stopping off in Lexington for a year before heading to the NBA, needed the steadying influence of senior Darius Miller, a Maysville native. 

Sadly, those days of in-state heroes and four-year commitments are long gone and aren’t likely to come back any time soon.

What major college basketball has become now is vastly different from the game played just 14 years ago. That’s what the Name, Image and Likeness money along with unlimited transfers has done. I’m not a fan of either but I won’t attempt to analyse a situation that has evoked so many conflicting emotions and changes every time the wind shifts.

For example, I never understood why college athletes were prohibited from being paid anything. While a free college education along with room and board is substantial, the old rules meant there was little money in the pocket for going to a movie or McDonald’s. But million-dollar contracts? That’s more than some rookies make in the pros and, frankly, that just doesn’t jive with the idea of college preparing one for the workplace.

And I never understood a transfer having to sit out a year. Most college students can transfer seamlessly, but the flip side of that is that college basketball players are not just any college student. We want the black-and-white answers but the reality is that the answers are coming in millions of shades of gray. I suggest you watch Jeremy Schapp’s excellent look at the subject called “Paid to Play.” As of this writing, it is available on the ESPN app.

But we will stop there and let those who are in the position to make the decisions about the direction of major college sports sweat. But let’s stop kidding ourselves about what has happened to the game I learned to love. It’s now a pro game with many players making more money as “college players” than they would in the NBA. Somehow, that just doesn’t line up with  this old-fashioned fan.

While major college basketball is in chaos, what’s most troubling is the behavior of many fans, especially those who claim to be followers of Christ. I often think of what Jesus said in Matthew 7:17-20, “So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (English Standard Version ®).

In other words, everything we do is related to our relationship with Jesus. And as a basketball fan, a journalist and a pastor, fan behavior breaks my heart.  How can we claim to be people who claim to love others and make comments calling a coach’s intelligence into question if a recruit or transfer chooses another program?  How can we be fruit for Jesus if we are always belittling a player, coach or team?

Is it OK to criticize? Of course it is, if we do so civilly, but so much of what I see are comments that go far beyond that line. And it seems like far too many people believe that just because another person is leading their favorite team, they have a right to abandon Christian values.

While I live in Kentucky and have followed the Wildcats for 60 years, the immediacy and megaphone of social media has revealed that the problem is not limited to the Bluegrass or to basketball. It’s become a universal problem that is, in my book, greater than the one that has uprooted collegiate sports.

This blog and this website are directed at a Christian audience. I am sure some who read this don’t adhere to living as a follower of Christ and I would not expect those people to agree with this perspective. 

But if we are following Christ, our response to the world around us, including basketball, is a reflection of our faithfulness to Him. Let’s make our fruit be appealing.

Even when things aren’t going great for our team.