Midnight Madness
Catch-all for the start of practices
Via John Calipari’s Twitter account, Kentucky’s athletic department has translated Coach Cal’s speech at Big Blue Madness into eight different languages. This is not a typo.
Maybe it’s just the next step in creating an unstoppable Kentucky basketball force in a 24-7 Internet world, but … it just leaves me kind of speechless. Now Kentucky fans can see Calipari’s speech in Spanish, Kazakh, Russian, Chinese, Afrikaans, German, Arabic and American sign language.
CONTINUED >>
Tonight, everyone gets caught up in the madness. Well, almost everyone.
Midnight Madness (Thanks, Lefty Driesell) has kicked off the college basketball season for years, but it’s becoming bigger than ever. Once schools figured out the first day of practice (officially, tomorrow, thus the midnight) could be a showcase for fans and an excellent recruiting tool, everyone got in on the act.
It’s even televised. (Though you could always follow the events on Rush the Court’s live blog.) The only thing better would be if it were March Madness. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Here’s a guide to Midnight Madness.
CONTINUED >>
Plenty of fan bases – Kansas, Duke, Indiana, UNC – go nuts for their schools. But I’m with The Dagger on this one: Kentucky fans just go above and beyond.
Big Blue Madness, the school’s annual midnight scrimmage, is set for Oct. 16. Tickets go on sale Oct. 3 at 6 a.m. ET. Fans are camping out en masse for those tickets – and have been for days.
Wow. That’s equal parts devotion, excitement and a little bit crazy. Even new coach John Calipari is blown away by the number of tents filled with fans.
CONTINUED >>
The 2008-09 college basketball season is here. Well, almost.
Kentucky, Illinois, West Virginia and a handful of others jumped on an NCAA rule that allows schools two hours of team workouts per week (since mid-September) to host their Midnight Madness festivities a week before the season’s official start date of Oct. 17.
And more importantly, those schools get a head start on impressing coveted prospects.
CONTINUED >>
Midnight Madness has gone the way of the summer movie. It used to be a simple thing with skits and a scrimmage. Now it takes fancy cars, fireworks and a bit of panache.
Then again, considering how much I enjoyed The Bourne Identity and Transformers, a bigger show isn’t all that bad -- especially when I think of just how excruciating Midnight Madness could be. Hanging around in the gym on a Friday night just to see an exaggerated scrimmage? Ugh. Fans could use a little entertainment.
Enter the Jerry Bruckheimer version of Midnight Madness.
CONTINUED >>
