Fandom 250: Kentucky rules the winter
Kentucky basketball fans are the most fanatical in the nation. Despite the FanSided Fandom250 rankings, it’s not even close.
Kentucky basketball fans ranked number six in the 2017 FanSided Fandom250 ranking of college sports fans.
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If you know college basketball, you know this ranking is a farce. There are no more passionate, enduring, obsessed – even arrogant and entitled – fans in all the Universe than University of Kentucky basketball fans.
Who are these that rule the winter?
Are you a season ticket holder of any team that hosts Kentucky? Then you know exactly which relative, in-law, friend, co-worker, client, boss (oh God, the bosses) mail carrier, shop keeper, and dog catcher in your town is a Kentucky basketball fan because they all want your tickets.
Simply tally the number of phone calls, emails, texts, front yard encampments, and urban pursuits you experience in the 18 months leading up to the Kentucky basketball game against your school, divide by 326 trillion, and you have the exact number of Kentucky fans living within 1200 miles of your house.
I’m exaggerating a little. Divide by 326 billion. Make it 800 miles
Kentucky basketball puts the fanatical in fan.
The best place to hear a lady cuss? A Kentucky basketball game. (No citation for this, I still turn red when I remember it.)
You want your Kentucky friend to stop talking to you for a month? Beat Kentucky.
You want to see a mob? Skip Black Friday and look for a Kentucky open practice.
At Kentucky, rules exist dictating the earliest fans can lineup for Big Blue Madness, Kentucky’s fist practice of the season. Fans camp out for 48 hours to be the first in line to camp out for another 48 hours ahead of ticket sales. Yes. I said it’s a practice.
The best place to hear a lady cuss? A Kentucky basketball game.
Certifiably obsessed
What school has fans cited in a harassment lawsuit by basketball officials? You know who I’m talking about.
BigBluehistory.net includes a list of basketball referees that officiated Kentucky basketball games. The list includes outcomes for each game, biographies, portraits, and in some cases the scorer and timer dating back to 1907.
Basketball scholars argue over which two teams played the first ever college basketball game and the date – 1895 or 1896 – but we have a catalogue of referees who worked Kentucky games back to 1907 with biographies, pictures, the outcome of each game, and the Kentucky winning percentage for each referee? And these people are not kings of the FanSided Fandom250?
Russians were no doubt involved in the Fandom vote.
It’s jealousy
Of course, we are all simply jealous. Every Fandom wants to hear an opponent supporter say, “Wow, and I thought Kentucky basketball fans are crazy!”
In the SEC, we truly love Kentucky basketball fans. We tolerate Florida, where fans leave any football game when the Gators trail by 10 in the third quarter. We take advantage of Vanderbilt, where football tickets grow on trees. But we have Kentucky fans, and they make winters fun in the SEC.
Next: SEC Football TV Ratings Drop
And why shouldn’t Kentucky basketball fans be out of their minds passionate? When the last pointed ball is put to rest and the round ball emerges from it’s hibernation, so does the Kentucky basketball beast. It always has, and it always will. Just ask the Big Blue Nation.