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Columns

  • Have you ever seen a better team than this group from UK?

    In the century plus that the University of Kentucky has played basketball, from the jump ball era through the 2-handed-set-shot epoch, across the short-pants-and-Chuck Taylor All-Stars motif and into the urban chic dunk-and-punk style of game, we have seen Wildcats of all sizes and shapes win NCAA championships.

    But I’m venturing a guess we have never seen a better group of them come together and cut down the nets in the season’s final game than we did on Monday night in New Orleans.

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  • THE GAME is only second to what it could have been

    This week, our so-called one percent is made up not of an economic group but of those Kentuckians who are not incorrigibly immersed in college basketball.

    Are you thinking of anything other than Saturday’s big game in New Orleans? Can you wait? Breath bated? Bets down? Pride bursting? Have family gatherings, civic events and, oh, nuptials and funerals fallen off your Super Doppler?

    To heck with Florida vs. the United States Department of Health and Human Services. This is UK vs. UofL in the NCAA semifinals.

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  • SOUDER: This week’s sign that the apocalypse is upon us

    Odd things happen all the time. That it was 80 degrees on the last day of winter this week comes to mind.

    Along these lines, every week Sports Illustratedincludes in its magazine an item titled “This Week’s Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us,” which highlights things that have happened in the world that are somewhat odd or even bizarre in nature.

    Basically, they are things that make you scratch your head and say, “If that is going on, the end of the world must be near.”

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  • A memory of a buried March that is not buried by time

    Spring fever is supposed to arrive early in March, when you see the first robin, the bright yellow of an occasional daffodil, things green, abud and, well, warming.

    Spring fever is not supposed to be a full-blown summer sweat at the strike of the vernal equinox.

    It’s not as if there isn’t always plenty to talk about with basketball, politics, religion, economics, basketball, politics and, I don’t know, movies, but today we have to talk about the weather, because everyone is.

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  • The sweet madness of March lies mostly in the brackets

    A few weeks ago, I explained to my 10-year-old son how brackets work. I showed him the elimination process, how the winners moved one way and the losers another. I think he was more intrigued by the maze of lines than what they actually represented.

    And so today I give you the NCAA Tournament, basketball’s version of a maze in which good teams get lost when their names fall on bad lines.

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  • SOUDER: Reality is not always what it appears to be

    A few years ago I came across an article by Brett Kays that listed several things that a person would think were true if their only information came from what they saw on TV or in movies. The article, titled Reality According to Hollywood, included things such as:

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  • Why was our Monday morning so much different?

    We in Shelby County awoke Monday morning warmed by the pure, serene blanket of Currier & Ives-caliber snow.
    We roused to the joy that we could have a day away from school to frolic in the not-so-cold stuff, to embrace the beauty of winter without its treachery, to enjoy a postcard from a departing season.
    It was just sort of elegantly pastoral and winterfully wonderful, wasn’t it?
    Did you go walking in our winter wonderland?

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  • In this hot matchup, everyone was a winner

    This was a scene worthy of every clichéyou’ve ever read. Every trite phrase to define tension, intensity and personal fortitude was pulsing through the atmosphere. Every syllable of coach-speak echoed silently from the corners.

    Two teams confronted one another over the scant space of a yard or two, coaches tensely watching nearby, fans crammed into the standing-room-only swelter of a small venue.

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  • SOUDER: God is pro-life (and pro-choice)

    There’s an old joke in which an atheist scientist comes to God and says, "We've figured out how to create life without you."

    "OK, let me see you do it," God replies.

    As the atheist bends down to the ground and scoops up a handful of soil to begin his work, God stops him and says, “Oh, no you don't. Get your own dirt!"

    The point, of course, is that the first verse in the Bible (Genesis 1:1) is true: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

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  • An honest history lesson on Abraham Lincoln

    History always has been one of those amorphous topics to most of us, defined by our relationships to events and eventualities more than encyclopedic endeavors.

    If you had no reason to have studied the dynasties in China, the crusades to the Middle East or the founding of our nation/state/county, then you probably didn’t, unless someone stuck a book in front of you and required your attention for a semester or so.

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