Oh yes we are Rome!04:24 Mar 26 2011
Times Read: 685
Like Rome, Kentucky basketball is a storied, flawed empire: Bill Livingston
John Calipari is the current Caesar of the empire that is known as Kentucky basketball.
NEWARK, N.J. — Rick Pitino, upon taking the Kentucky job three coaches ago, called it the "Roman Empire of college basketball." Which was correct, in a way.
The Emperor Nero supposedly fiddled while Rome burned.
Kentucky's 1958 NCAA champions were called the "Fiddlin' Five." Said Adolph Rupp, the legendary Kentucky coach: "All they can do is win. They're not concert violinists, but they sure can fiddle."
Alas, the fiddle had not been invented in 64 A.D., when Nero's Rome was en fuego. The man at the original toga party would have played the lyre. Still, there are parallels between Kentucky, the opponent for Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 tonight, and the ancient Romans.
Kentucky is horse country, with yearling sales, immaculate thoroughbred farms and the Kentucky Derby.
The Roman emperor Caligula wanted to make his horse "Incitatus" (meaning, "swift") a Roman consul.
Rupp's teams often played "at full gallop" (another meaning for the Latin word Incitatus) on the fast break, and Pitino's teams at Kentucky pressed all game to speed up the tempo.
The Romans had emperors. Kentucky had Rupp, the "Baron of the Bluegrass."
The Romans, given the need in imperial emergencies to march legions quickly to the frontier, built roads that were unmatched for durability.
Some are in use today, 2,000 years later.
The Wildcats are on the Road to the Final Four, which Kentucky fans will travel in such vast numbers for basketball that they resemble Ohio State fans in football.
"I think there's a great parallel there [to Ohio State football]," said OSU coach Thad Matta. "This is the first time I've ever coached against Kentucky. But I think fanatically, I think their fans, it is do or die down there basketballwise."
The Roman Empire had intrigues, poisonings and shivs stuck between the ribs of leading politicians. It lasted so long because its legionnaires won.
Kentucky basketball has had its point-shaving intrigues, its poison of racism and its back-stabbing of coaches who failed to be all-conquering. It has lasted so long because of a win-at-all costs ethos. (See the appointment two years ago of the notorious, but unconvicted, John Calipari.)
You don't hang around from 753 B.C. until 476 A.D. (Rome), or last as a great power from the 1940s until the next vacated Final Four appearance by coach Cal (Kentucky), without a serious infusion of ruthlessness. Much as Rome is the Eternal City, Kentucky is the Eternal Program.
"That's the plan of what we're trying to build, a program," said Matta.
In winning Final Fours I, II, III and IV, respectively, Rome beat the Etruscans at their place; used a slowdown to squeak by Carthage, which was ably coached by Hannibal; defeated their former Italian allies, thus gaining home-court advantage for hundreds of years; and beat all three parts of Gaul.
Kentucky won its first of seven eventual NCAA championships (the "first four" under Rupp) in the spring of 1948. Rupp piled up his victories in the Southeastern Conference, a football conference, whose basketball teams might as well have been the Little Sisters of the Poor.
But some of the other big college basketball programs of the 1940s were Rhode Island State, Long Island University, NYU and Holy Cross. None of them did much in my bracket this year.
LIU's coach Clair Bee, the only man with a better lifetime winning percentage (82.6 percent to Rupp's 82.2 percent), wrote inspirational young adult fiction in the Chip Hilton series.
Rupp -- after Kentucky's title hopes were severely damaged in 1954 when Cliff Hagan, Frank Ramsey and Lou Tsioropoulos were declared ineligible -- refused to accept an NCAA Tournament bid. To the players who remained, he said, "I am not taking you . . . to the NC2A Tournament."
Rupp was the Woody Hayes of Kentucky, creating both an irreplaceable source of state pride and his own flawed legend.
During triumphal processions, as barbarian chieftains were paraded through the streets of Rome in chains, a slave stood in the chariot of the victorious general, whispering, "All glory is fleeting."
Rupp would have known about the slave part, anyway. He was a man of his place and time, whose deplorable racial views conditioned Southern basketball for decades.
He would have ignored the rest of the warning. And why not?
Kentucky survived the "death penalty" when its 1952-53 season was canceled because of point-shaving in 1951. It survived various play-for-pay charges under Rupp's successors, including an incident in which an air-express package meant for prized recruit (and former Cavalier) Chris Mills, broke open like a pinata, showering $1,000 in cash hither and yon.
Like major banks in the United States and, for that matter, Rome for over a millennium, Kentucky basketball is probably too big to fail. Will the same be true with Ohio State's troubled football program?
On game days, Rupp, a superstitious man, always carried a lucky buckeye in his pocket.
© 2011 cleveland.com. All rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, March 24, 2011, 11:40 PM Updated: Thursday, March 24, 2011, 11:49 PM
By Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer
Mel Evans l Associated Press
View full sizeMel Evans l Associated Press
COMMENTS
-
NocturnalMistress
08:25 Mar 30 2011
I am glad you are okay. :)
Joli
04:16 Mar 31 2011
Give Sevenn treats too!