I have gone mountain biking with Nate twice and a little after work ride with the pups on our local trail once. I took my road bike out twice when we had that nice warm spell. Back in January when we did do an epic ski run, I injured my hip again so I took some time off running and started swimming twice a week. I have since started running again and I'm still swimming twice a week and driving the masters coach batty!! I guess the biggest news to celebrate is that my alma mater won the national championship in basketball!! Heck yea, baby!!! Which brings me to why I am blogging today....
It's been an interesting month... Nate and I have lived together for almost 6 years and for every March, I pay attention to basketball. I'm not sure why Nate thought this year was different, but I had asked Nate if we could go to Lexington over the weekend of the final four and championship game. I'll give him credit (although I don't want to) but he never said no. He said that we should talk about it, which I took as a no. (Yes, that makes me a girl.) But when I asked him why he was hesitant, he said, "you have watched one game this year and you fell asleep". 1) we got rid of cable awhile ago so watching games on espn was not an option. 2) the only other game that I know they aired on tv was the Louisville game and we were in north Conway with Kelli and Doug at a restaurant. I was not about to subject Nate to sitting at a bar for an hour watching Kentucky basketball. I live in the land where professional sports rule and they don't air college sports very often. 3) I did download the espn app to my phone and got an alert every time Kentucky played. I wasn't a die-hard must watch every game because I will lose control if I don't type of fan, but I did pay attention and I knew they were good.
I watched all of the games. I even stayed up and watched one game by myself and had some lovely bounding with Oakley and Scout and chatted with my good friend Jen. Nate watched the final four game. That was the one where they were calling ridiculous charge calls on Kentucky. The first four were nuts but the fifth one was soooo not a charge and I called the BS call and Nate was all, "but he totally ran into him!" .... listen here buddy... Then the night of the championship game, Nate said the worst thing possible! He said "UK fans are just like red sox fans". I didn't lose it on him and didn't want to argue with him about it so I let it slide... However I have a blog so I'm going tell him how he is completely wrong... :-)
Reason #1 that UK fans are not like red sox fans: UK basketball players like other college basketball players are amateur athletes and they are essentially still kids. I know, I know... There are lots of arguments that college basketball and football players aren't exactly amateur but they are not paid athletes. They are not quite professional players and they don't quite have the mentality of a professional athlete. I still have a hard time fathoming how much professional athletes get paid to do what they are doing and that some of them have the balls to whine that they should get paid more or that they deserve more! Waaa!!! College basketball players are still coachable and the coaches and players still have a more father/son like relationship compared to pros. I'm not quite sure why there are coaches in the pros. Now that Phil Jackson has retired, I don't know a single NBA coach.
Reason #2 that UK fans are not like red sox fans: some of the UK fans went to school at the university and therefore are Wildcats themselves! Not many red sox fans can say "I was a Red sox". Granted, I get that is a little apples and oranges comparison... But still college sports have the college backing where professional sports have the backing from a bunch of corporations and millionaires!!
Reason #3 that this UK fan is not like red sox fans: this UK basketball fan and all of my team mates were not just wildcats but we were wildcat athletes! For four years, I lived, breathed, and drank wildcat pride. The first week of practice, we were handed university of Kentucky swimming and diving gear and we wore it with pride. We each might have chose the school for different reasons, but you couldn't help but love the colors blue and white and cheer "C-A-T-S cats cats cats" by the time we graduated. We went to "study hall" with the basketball players, football players, gymnasts, rifle team and tennis players. We shared the weight room with the softball and soccer players and the cheerleaders. I got to sit next to Tim Couch in the training room. We went to parties with Jules camara and Saul smith. It wasn't like the freak sighting of the red sox player at a fancy restaurant, we went to classes with these guys. And yes, they went to classes!!
To wrap this up... My goal for the next year is to some how get Nate to at least appreciate my pride in my college. I am dragging him back to lexington in the fall if any one is interested in a make-shift alumni weekend. I'm going to try and drag him to a Kentucky game at Madison square garden if Kentucky has a game there next year. I'm sure he'll make this difficult but I like challenges!! :-)
