Nahhh.
Seriously, we do not want to fire University of Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Billy Gillispie.
So why is the name of the site firebilly.com, you ask? To keep it away from some crazy UK fans, we answer.
You see, approximately 95% of UK’s fanbase are just awesome. They cheer hard for great effort on and off the court, they are proud of the history of the program and support it with undying love. But that other 5% are either too passionate or are just plain nuts. They’re the folks who call in on local radio sports shows and decry the coaching staff and players, even after a win. They’re the ones who jump online and make terrible videos calling for a head coach’s dismissal.
And when Coach Billy Clyde has a tough loss — those tough losses come to everybody — they’ll be calling in talk shows and writing hateful Internet posts. And one of them might want to do something stupid like buy firebilly.com and make an actual hate site against the coach.
So, we buy firebilly.com and make it a pro-UK and pro-Gillispie site. Take that, Crazy 5%!
Of course, this all started because of Tubby Smith.
In 2005, a great sensible man bought the FireTubby.com domain name. Same reasoning as before; to keep the domain name out of the Crazy 5%’s hands. (Back then, they called themselves the Concerned.) At first the domain was inactive, but later he set up a blog in order to try to explain his position on why Tubby should not be fired. Plus he wanted a way to follow along with the Wildcats, and make fun of those Concerned who were calling for Tubby’s head.
Turns out the blog did really well; all those Concerned fans who would Google for “Fire Tubby” ended up on his pro-Tubby web site! He added a few more folks to help with blogging and taunting. He created a FireRich.com web site for University of Kentucky football coach Rich Brooks. And when Tubby’s tenure at the University of Kentucky concluded, the firetubby.com writers wanted to continue the tradition.
We hope you stick around. We have a good time following UK Basketball, and plan on doing so in the future. And we can’t wait for the Fire Billy chants to start up.
But we’re not going to be the ones chanting — we’ll be pointing and laughing.