"And thus I clothe my
naked villainy
With odd old ends
stol'n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when
most I play the devil"
I've spent a great portion of my years fighting a losing battle. Tooth and nail, blood and bone, quip and keyboard have been the viscera and the tools of my war. I've used logic, reason, appeals to rational minds and every weapon at my disposal. I've gone through opinion, fact, statistics and old fashioned common sense in the way an archer goes through arrows. My quiver is empty now, I have nothing left to shoot. But I will not stand down.
We're cheaters, we're "everything that's wrong with college basketball," we're "crazy." These, and a host more, are the things said about UK over the years. Rick Pitino is the coach? He's a cheater and too slick. Adolph Rupp? He was a racist and your titles don't count. Tubby Smith? You ran a great coach out of town… but we don't want to hire him because we laughed at you when you were down under him and proclaimed your fall from grace to be a permanent state of affairs. Nothing a Kentucky coach does, or a fan says, or how a player performs will ever change that. We will not be respected (For the most part) for our dedication, passion and pride. Our tradition and history will be vilified and have aspersion cast upon it in an attempt to blacken their achievement and merit. The hypocrisy of others will be ignored, the shaky foundations of a system whitewashed so that its stains can be overlooked in the pursuit of the false idolatry of the "student athlete," as the stones are cast against us in the name of sin.
I never wanted to accept this role. I wanted folks to see the good and take the bad with a grain of salt because, in the end, we're all guilty of something. I know now that it is never going to happen so I have chosen to embrace what so many have wanted to thrust upon us: We are the villains of this play and we are going to play the role to the hilt. We are the evil that is coming for you out of the dark. We are going to be every ugly, hateful and spiteful that you've said all along. We're going to crush your Cinderella, beat the crap out of her Prince and then burn her house down with her wicked stepsisters in it crying for mercy.
Why? 'Cause that's what villains do. We're not redeemable, we're not anti-heroes and in the words of the American poet Common:"We straight nightmares."
(TO BE READ IN THE VOICE OF MORGAN FREEMAN.)
