Salvage Heart

The taste of jambalaya still sweet (and spicy) on my breath, I watched the Kentucky Wildcats stand up the LSU Tigers on fourth and two, clinching the victory in third overtime, 43-37.

To watch UK knock off a #1 team in football lacks contemporary precedent (I missed both the 1951 and 1964 episodes). This is a team for whom a win in the SEC against anyone other than Ole Miss, Miss St. or Vanderbilt was cause for tearing down goal posts (or expanding Commonwealth Stadium). Their brief #8 ranking this year, fat on the early season flops, felt as false as hopes of a bowl game with a 5-5 record and Tennessee still remaining on the schedule. Last week's loss to South Carolina, knocking the Cats down to #17 and 5-1 on the year, felt like the inevitable correction in a bubble market.

To be sure, my history of Kentucky football is an incomplete. The Wildcats held my full attention throughout the 1980s, from the onset of the Jerry Claiborne, wide-tackle six era and 0-10-1, to the unlikely turnaround lead by Randy Jenkins and his moustache, the fleet feet of Chip Massie, the 80-yard punt by Paul Calhoun (and Bobby Knight chair-throwing contest victory he lodged one evening at a local watering hole).

My first radio, in fourth grade, was so I could listen to the Cats, moving "from left to right on your radio dial," in the words of broadcaster Caywood Ledford. Jenkins gave way to Bill Ransdell, the scrappy QB who led the Cats to Bowl victory and winning seasons, who made it to the NFL. In high school I had my folks tickets, and we'd wander the concourse, then squeeze in to the two-yard-line seats toward the top deck...for about five minutes. Was it Bowling Green State or Central Michigan when my friend and I waded through the deluge to squat in unwanted 50-yard-line seats, then out to the parking lot mudhole where we pushed cars through the swamp out to Alumni Drive?

Why am I asking you? Because I don't remember. Those years subsequent faded, and the era of Hal Mumme, Tim Couch, Jared Lorenzen, probabation, are fuzzy hearsay, no more than the occasional box score in a Portland, Oregon, newspaper as UK fell to top-25 [insert name].

The years of almost-but-no. The third quarter and fourth quarter collapses. The heart and heartbreak, and the long shadow of the basketball program.

Last year I sat in a hospital waiting room while surgeons cut a tumor out of my father's skull, watching UK beat Clemson in a bowl game. Trying days, but the win still gave me a thrill.

Today, at the start of the second half, with Kentucky only down 17-14, I walked over to my neighbors' house, where I drank a beer and ate jambalaya, and wondered at what point I would need to quietly exit this Louisiana native's home to avoid a situation.

Answer: Mid-2OT, when the wife called to say she was taking the kids to the pumpkin patch, without me (I have a conflict).

I watched the win alone, and cheered, though probably not alone. My shirt and jeans were the wrong color blue, and tomorrow I'll be back to picking through the box scores. But tonight, for one moment, the years of almosts and could have beens, the guts and futility of Claiborne's wide-tackle six, and the little program that couldn't, the insult of the "Bluegrass Miracle" that beat Kentucky last time LSU came to Lexington, for one moment it all faded away.

Go Cats.

Labels: football, Jerry Claiborne, Kentucky Wildcats