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Much has been made over the last few months about something we thought was a non-story — the decision of the University of Kentucky to market it’s football team in the Commonwealth’s largest city, Louisville. If you’re unaware, Kentucky’s marketing slogan for the football Wildcats is “Believe in Blue.” To market the Cats, the university has put up several billboards bearing things like, “Believe in Gatorade Baths,” “Believe in Loyalty,” and “Believe in Circus Catches.” [Images of all of them can be seen here.]

Despite their benign nature, the “Believe . . .” billboards have apparently caused quite a stir in Louisville, where Kentucky placed them close to Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium (but also adjacent to I-65 and the Louisville airport).

Harry Douglas, a fantastic wide receiver for Louisville and also a bit of geography buff, apparently, had this to say about the billboards in Louisville:

Wow. Whoever put them up there, it’s ridiculous. Lexington is in Lexington, and Louisville is in Louisville. [Link]

That quote appeared in a Courier-Journal story that — like every other CJ story that mentions the billboards — failed to mention Louisville’s decision several years ago to place billboards around the state promoting its athletic programs.* (There’s one adjacent to I-75 in northern Rockcastle County, for example. Bet the Rockcastle County UofL Alumni Chapter is very active. Bet Brad Durham loves it.) Of course, the CJ never mentions Louisville’s decision to schedule a game ahead of the UK/UofL game in 2001 to ensure Louisville had an extra game to prepare for Kentucky when its harping on Kentucky’s decision to move the game to Week 3, either.

Anyway, let’s get to last night. We were killing time before going out to dinner by watching the Troy/Oklahoma State game. The game was delayed because of weather, so Reece Davis, Lou Holtz, and Mark May were filling the delay by discussing this week’s games. After Holtz and May discussed UK/UofL (Holtz picked the Cards and May picked the Cats, for what it’s worth, and that’s not much, we’d say), Davis had this to say:

You know Kentucky bought billboards all around the state — “Believe in Blue” — and they featured some of the prominent Wildcat players. They put some in Louisville as well, and it got under Harry Douglas’ skin, he said “Hey, Louisville is in Louisville, and Lexington is in Lexington.”

Harry, I know you’re on your way to law school, but last time I checked, Louisville was in Kentucky. And it is the state university, I think they can put billboards there if they want.

This made our night.

We’re waiting for someone to ask Douglas how he feels about the Kentucky Derby being run in Louisville. Or the fact that Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium is adjacent to the Kentucky fairgrounds.

Onward and upward!

*To his credit, the author of the story did mention the Louisville billboards in a subsequent blog post. He noted, correctly, we think, that there’s a difference between placing a billboard in Frankfort and placing one next to a stadium. He failed to note that “Believe in Blue” was considerably less, how should we put this, less trash talkish?, than “We’re miles ahead.” [Link] This would be relevant, we feel, since the story was about how Louisville lets its play do the talking.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 7:07 am and is filed under Allenby for Heisman!, College Football, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.