Don’t ya get sick of seeing the image on the left?
Every time you read a rumor on the Internet about Coach Gillispie’s personal life, you end up having somebody post this image. When the Wildcats lost four-in-a-row, you couldn’t go anywhere on the Internet and not stumble upon a rival fan (or a spurned Aggie fan) posting the image. I’m sick of it. I’m sure Coach Gillispie wants to vomit every time he’s linked or emailed it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’ll ever go away. The Internet never forgets.
Mark Story’s piece on the rumors that swelled around Coach Gillispie speculates that the rumors probably stemmed from his past DUI charges:
At the news conference in which he was introduced as Tubby Smith’s successor, Gillispie publicly acknowledged that he had had a pair of alcohol-related traffic arrests in the seven years before his hiring at UK (one was pleaded down to a lesser charge, and the other was dismissed for lack of evidence).
The 48-year-old coach is divorced.
Those two factors seemed to make speculating on the new coach’s personal life a statewide obsession. …
By December, when Gillispie’s first UK team was struggling mightily and the mood surrounding the program was surly, rumors about the coach were rampant. Callers to Lexington sports talk radio shows were mentioning them without challenge. The talk was pervasive all around the state.
So take a coach’s multiple public mistakes. (I mean the DWIs here, not the divorce.) Throw that into a cauldron full of rabid basketball fans that are already boiling over due to the previous coaching regime. Throw in some good ole Kentucky oneupmanship and speculation. Don’t forget to add some anonymous assholery from the Internet — but not too much, a dash will do ya. Mmmm, smell that? That’s some sweet Bullshit Burgoo, just like Pappy used to make!
Mark Story’s article tries to verify most of the bigger rumors that were cookin’ late last year. All addressed rumors were rebuffed. (I didn’t see the “Billy Behaves Badly Because He Has A Nineteen-Year-Old Girlfriend” rumor, but that might had been a split from the “Billy Behaved Badly At Merrick Inn’s Pool” rumor.) Of course, having the Merrick Inn owner or Chief Beatty publicly rebuke the rumor won’t matter to whoever told you about it:
Misty Carlisle, general manager at DeSha’s, says, “I can promise you that story is absolutely untrue. Yet I have customers come in here arguing with me, that they know it’s true.
What’s more important is the telling of the rumor, and the glorification that comes from it. Some of us Wildcat fans want to be program insiders in order to elevate us socially among other fans. That’s why we have roughly a thousand recruiting “experts” running around on message boards and blogs touting the inside information they have.
Don’t take me as a fool — I’m not blinded by the printed word of newspaper or press release. Of course Misty Carlisle is going to say the rumor is untrue; she doesn’t want a Big Blue Boycott by the now-swelling “Yay Gillispie” crowd! Of course President Todd is going to get Gillispie’s back and cooperate with a positive Herald-Leader write-up of the coach. It might be collusion, or it might not; just because the Herald-Leader or any other paper writes something doesn’t make it 100% true.
But you can’t fool Dr. Todd:
Says Todd: “One thing Mitch said to me when some of this discussion was going on, with everyone walking around with a cell phone with a camera in their pocket, if this stuff was going on, it would be on YouTube or whatever. And it never was.”
Thanks, Mr. Barnhart, for reading our humble site. Let’s do lunch this week; I have some grand ideas about basketball promotions for next year. Just as a teaser, let me share with you this: For the intro movie for Big Blue Madness, lets recreate the end credits of Tombstone with Billy and the kids. Rupp will EXPLODE!
(Hey Mitch, did you notice that I didn’t use the Tombstone “Hell’s coming with me!” scene? That’s because I know you’re a religious man, and you wouldn’t want Hell coming with anything to do with UK. See, I’m quite the sharp tack! How about we meet upstairs at Joe Bologna’s with your media crew?)
As the Big Blue Nation transitions into “Billy: Year Two” by starting to count down these tacky summer days, I know that the rumor mill will start churning up. We’ll probably get our first “Billy Behaving Badly On The Golf Course” tale, which will involve a young co-ed driving the drink cart. There might be a few more sprouting up by the time students head back to school in the fall. Just because I know what I’m reading or hearing is at least 75% bullshit doesn’t make it any more enjoyable.
So the tall tale will be told. Then that damned DWI image will show up again. The Internet never forgets.
