BTI's Rants and Ramblings: Friday Summer Fan Stories

by:Bryan13•05/20/16

Every Friday from now until football season, I give this post up to you. You give me your favorite, most memorable, funniest, saddest, whatever story related to UK athletics. It doesn’t have to be any minimum length although the person who send me a 1-sentence post probably will not make it. But I just want the story that you always tell your friends or means the most to you. You don’t have to use your name. Just send it to me at [email protected].

I have been a Kentucky sports fan since I can't remember. My father who passed away in 1999 was an even bigger one than I was and never even attended college. When I was younger and traveled for business I would sit out in hotel parking lots and try to pick up Kentucky games on the car radio. Back when Rick Pitino was the coach at Kentucky and still in his heyday (much unlike today) my sister and brother-in law were very active in the Alumni Association and had season tickets. One time he got my father some tickets for a basketball game and after the game they went to dinner at Bravo Pitinos. Pitino happened to be there holding court with some of his friends and my father told my brother-in-law that he was going to go over and introduce himself and shake his hand. My brother-in-law begged him not to as he thought it would be an imposition to interrupt him during dinner but my dad did not care and marched right over and introduced himself and shook his hand. He called me that night and told me what he had done, he was tickled to death.

When Cawood Ledford was retiring from broadcasting the Kentucky games, they had a retirement dinner for him on the floor of Rupp Arena. My brother-in-law was able to get us a table on the floor of Rupp Arena through is work. Pitino and some of the players happened to be at the table next to us. Once, as I went to the restroom Pitino happened to be in the restroom at the next urinal. Later that night I called my dad and said, "Dad, I heard that you went up to Pitino in a restaurant, introduced yourself and shook his hand." He said "I sure did son isn't that great?" I said "Well that's nothing, I just peed next to him". He laughed about that every time we talked about it for the rest of his life.