It comes with the territory.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, or what you do for a living. It doesn’t matter if it’s basketball or trading stocks on Wall Street or playing checkers at your local drug store. When you’re the best, people are going to hate.
I get kind of amused at Kentucky fans on message boards and public comments sections, when someone is blatantly trolling against the Big Blue. You’ll see them come out of the woodworks to defend our team, to defend the honor of Big Blue.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with defending our fair team. It’s a good thing that so many will grab the torches and pitchforks and rail against any negative article, against every hateful comment. But you know what this all really means?
We’ve arrived.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re back on top. And when you’re on top of the mountain, everyone wants to knock you down. They all want to see you knocked down a peg, just so their team can take up [I]your[/I] mantle!
What’s scary is when they don’t care anymore.
Take Indiana for example. Remember back in the 70’s and 80’s, when Bob Knight and Company were about as hated as poison ivy? Then look what happened in the 90’s and 00’s. They became irrelevant. They were nobodies. No one mentioned Indiana in the same breath as the other big schools of the era. No one bothered to talk poorly about the Hoosiers, or write negative columns or spark debate on their legitimacy. Why?
BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T MATTER ANYMORE!
Why bother hating something that’s so irrelevant? How many people do you hear spouting off about how much they hate beets? Or take to the message boards to publicly condemn the Studebaker?
Out of sight, out of mind. It’s a dangerous place to be.
The late, great Dale Earnhardt once said, “It doesn’t matter if the fans boo you. It’s when they’re quiet that you begin to worry.” The same holds true for our beloved Cats.
So go ahead, let the commenters talk negatively about UK. Let them dismiss the “one-and-done” philosophy as the decline of college athletics. Let them call John Calipari an insufferable cheat. Let them say that Kentucky’s fanbase has unrealistic expectations.
It just means we’ve made it.
