Big Blue Madness campout scheduled for October 1-2
Mark your calendars, BBN. It’s time for Big Blue Madness campout — a new and improved edition, at that.
Ryan “Scoop” Lemond broke the news Tuesday afternoon that BBM campout is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 1 and Sunday, Oct. 2, with further details coming soon.
Back in July, Kentucky head coach John Calipari announced the annual campout would be returning this season for the first time since 2019. Big Blue Madness was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19 before returning in 2021, though tickets were distributed online and the in-person campout was canceled.
Now, it’s time to bring back Kentucky basketball’s prestigious tip-off event.
“It is unacceptable to not have a campout,” Calipari wrote at the time. “It is part of what makes UK Basketball special. We have some great ideas on how, where, and when that will make it tremendous. Unless there is some sort of roadblock, campout will return!”
Previously taking place the final week of September, BBM campout will now open the month of October. If you can’t make it in person, you can always claim your free tickets on Ticketmaster.
However you can get there, Calipari wants you there. He wants Big Blue Madness to return to the must-see event it was in the early years of his time in Lexington. It needs to be an event that’s talked about for weeks and helps land title-winning recruits.
If not, “we didn’t do our job.”
“Madness, you gotta be talking about Madness for a month or we didn’t do our job. It’s unacceptable. The campout, you gotta have the campout,” Calipari said on an appearance on BBN Tonight. “In basketball, one player can help you win a national title. It’s not football. Football is the cavalry. One player. So everything you do has to be geared toward not losing that guy because theirs is so much better.
“You don’t want them to have any chance to say, ‘This is way better there.’ I still remember this [mimics John Wall dance], guys coming out of the ceiling. We gotta get back to that.”
It hasn’t been that, but he’s planning on bringing that back — and he’ll do it himself if that’s what it takes.
“When they come to campus, you gotta have that buzz. You gotta have the same buzz,” Calipari said. “It’s gotta get back to where it was. I’m going to be in the middle of it. I’m not leading it, I’ve got other things I’ve gotta do but nothing is going to get done without me knowing. Here’s where we gotta go with Madness.
“We gotta have Madness where everybody is talking about it for a month after it ends. That’s not happened the last three years or so. So we gotta get that back. It is unacceptable that Madness isn’t where it needs to be.”
It all starts at campout from Oct. 1-2.
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