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Nearly a century ago, on a quiet Saturday morning in a small farmhouse outside Halstead, Kansas, a young boy gathers rags and brings them to his mother. He is the son of German immigrants and something has captured his imagination even at that young of an age. The local High School has won the State Championship in basketball and he is thrilled by such glory in so remote a place, and as he hands the rags to his mother and asks her to sew them into a basketball, he dreams great dreams. Sports, it seems, made them more than poor farmers - it made heroes of ordinary people - people like him. As his mother took the rags from his hands and selected her thread, he smiled happily. He had already made up his mind what it is that he wanted to be.
On a muddy Kansas cornfield, Adolph Rupp held his ball his mother had made him and hoisted it up high over his brother's shoulders and into history. A dream that had began in a child's hands as a ball of rags would one day become the greatest college basketball program the world would ever know.
Years later, at Rupp's retirement, he assured the fans that what he had made at the University of Kentucky was enduring, for Rupp had amassed an incredible record of accomplishment that placed Kentucky above and beyond the reach of all other college programs. From a child of immigrants to a Masters degree in education from Columbia University, Rupp would go on to coach the Kentucky Wildcats from 1930-1972, and in 41 seasons at Kentucky, Rupp had compiled an astounding record of 876 wins against only 190 losses. He had won 4 NCAA Championships, an NIT Championship, 27 Southeastern Conference titles, and been named National Coach of the Year 4 times. In parting, Rupp summed up his accomplishments by saying that "If the program should fail at the University of Kentucky, then I have built it upon a sand foundation."
Why did Rupp choose those words in announcing his successor, Joe B. Hall, whom he professed great confidence in? Was he speaking of Hall, or was he speaking to future generations of Kentucky fans...perhaps even charging us with a great responsibility?
I believe he did. Rupp told us, in so many words, that this is what I have spent my life making for you and your children. Here is a tradition...an heirloom to be passed from generation to generation. Each the guardians over it before passing it to the next.
On a cold winter day, barely 5 years after he spoke those words, Adolph Friedrich Rupp succumbed to cancer and diabetes after listening to Kentucky defeat Kansas on December 10, 1977. He was 76 years old at the time of his death and he had spent more than half his life as Kentucky’s Head basketball coach.
Where do we stand today? A coach mired is selfish pride and stubborn denial. Fans bickering and disillusioned, an administration wondering how they can save their own skins. Each assured the other is the problem.
Are we playing Kentucky basketball? Grunting out 4 losses in a row to Vanderbilt and hoping for NCAA Tournament bids? We've lost 10 games or more in four of the last seven seasons and will soon make that five of the last eight. We play a deliberate, plodding style of basketball that is in direct contrast with Kentucky's rich tradition of up-tempo fast paced basketball and we are losing ground by the day to our brothers in North Carolina and Kansas.
We are not attracting enough of the top talent in the country to Kentucky in order to maintain our tradition and we have not been attracting and keeping that top talent for some time now. In the rare instances where we have landed elite players, can you think of one that didn't leave, or try to unsuccessfully?
When Orlando "Tubby" Smith accepted the job as the head coach of Kentucky, he accepted more than the responsibility for wins and losses. He accepted the responsibility to put the history and tradition of Kentucky ahead of his own pride, selfishness, and ego. If he did not understand that at the time he accepted the job then the gentleman that hired him was derelict in his duties.
Today, can you honestly tell yourselves that Tubby is putting the program ahead of himself? On the radio, does he defend our program or does he defend his own selfish interests? When he tells yet another fan that he doesn't have to answer that question or when yet another caller is cut off, is that what Rupp had in
mind he was leaving behind on that cold winter day in 1977 when he listened to his final game?
In Kentucky, like in North Carolina and Kansas I would imagine, you can still watch old men shoot free throws and laugh like school children before their aches and pains catch up with them. They know of the players and the players before those players as they always have. It is often said that it is impossible to tell someone that has not been to war about war, and I would imagine it is equally pointless to tell those that have not grown up in Kentucky that basketball is not just a game.
Our lives are measured in games. Not by wins, or championships, or even defeats. Instead, basketball is a season. Like summer or winter. It began as a time when families huddled together in cold weather in front of the radio to listen to the games and endures today as Kentuckians from all over the world huddle together in front of their computers and await the leaves to fall.
What we need to know about Kentucky basketball is the same thing now as it has always been. The game is special to us and because of that, it is enough. We need to know that we care about the program, as others care and have always cared. That is our bond. Our shared secret. The hidden fabric of Kentuckians the world over and the one that Adolph Rupp himself made for us as the sum of his life.
Seasons change. A perfect screen is set and a fifteen foot jumper lifts slowly towards an iron rim. An old man smiles. A mother stitches rags into a ball for her young son. We are all at home once again.
Before he died, Rupp said that what he had made was enduring for all time. I believed him. We all did.
