Rock Chalk

This past Saturday afternoon I had the extreme pleasure, call it downright joy, of taking my wife and Kyd to their first Kansas basketball games at Allen Fieldhouse. It was my first game in probably seven years, and that’s just silly. I’m a mediocre KU fan. I wasn’t raised a Jayhawk, and in fact, I really didn’t consider going to Kansas until my senior year in high school, when it was clear that I wasn’t leaving the state. Hell, I was lucky Kansas let my ass in.

And I’m not usually the kind of guy who adopts a new team to cheer for, I’ve made it very clear that I wouldn’t become a Royals or Chiefs fan when we moved here, and I’ve kept my promise. But I wasn’t really a huge fan of any college while I was growing up. When I was 12, I fell pretty hard for UCLA after visiting my cousin and hanging out on campus and in Westwood. To this day, there’s a spot in my heart for UCLA. I kind of view UCLA as my own biggest rival for KU and the stick I use to measure everything about Kansas. But I root for them, always hoping to see a KU-UCLA Championship. Well, and to win that game. So far, we’re 0-1 against them in the Final Four. A fact that would really needle me, except that was the night I had my first date with the woman who would become my wife. So it worked out better than okay.

So I entered my freshman year at Kansas with no real ties. Then I went to my first game at the Fieldhouse and I was thoroughly impressed. At the time, I was the sullen kid who tried to not get impressed by anything.  I didn’t go to games to cheer, I went to study.  Or so I liked to think back then. Clapping? Nah, I’d leave that to everyone else. I was too cool for that, plus I thought I knew the game better than just about everyone else. Except maybe Bum and V.

Things really changed for me 15 years ago. Really, the anniversary was the day I took my girls to their first game.  The defending National Champions were coming to play KU. This opponent just so happened to be the UCLA Bruins. I was stoked, to use a word picked up from my visit to UCLA.  A few days before the game, someone knocked on my dorm door to sell shirts for the game. It read “PHUCK UCLA.” I purchased two, one for me and one for my UCLA alumni cousin. Yes, I sent it to him. He said he kept it for a while, I doubt that. I did wear mine to his wedding under my tux a few years later.

Kansas had a fun and very talented team that year. It was an easy team to fall for. We were ranked second in the nation. So here we are, trailing the defending champs by 15 at the half. I was fearing all the electronic mail messages that would be waiting for me if I was able to get a connection that night. Yep, it was so long ago, “Email” was new. Hell, that very month I spent over $400 on AOL because they charged by the hour, and I didn’t have a life. True story. Sad story, too. (About two years later I did the math, to see what I would have earned had I purched AOL stock instead of logging all the hours I had. At that time, I would have earned over $75k. No shit. I will now slam my head on my desk)

The second half started and we put such a beating on UCLA, that they made me a KU fan. It was no longer about cheering for my cousins school, but beating the shit out of him and them. Mission accomplished. And for 15 years, it’s been the single best sporting even I ever witnessed in person.  The energy in that place could have powered Lawrence for years.

Walking in to the Fieldhouse this Saturday was completely different, on every level. For one, the place has been upgraded and it’s absolutely beautiful when you enter. There’s a Hall of Fame worthy of being called just that. And there’s a nice gift shop that makes their prices almost excusable.  Now there’s a difference between how an 18 year old male and a 10 year old female view a sporting event, and everything else in life. But she’s not so different from me. Just a lot taller than I ever was. She’s too cool to be impressed. She doesn’t want to clap and she’s more interested in the cheerleaders (okay, I was too. I said was) and how cute Baby Jay is. But then we got to the introduction, and she smiled. It was an ear to ear smile. The perfect smile.  Absolutely beautiful smile, as it always is, but this was also the smile of someone in the middle of being impressed.

The girl who has chosen to remain loyal to her father, which I totally accept and respect, by often stating that she’s an MU fan, leans over to me and says, “I want to go to school here.”

Oh the places you’ll go.