Today Red V. Blue was featured in the Jerry Tipton UK basketball notes column in the Lexington Herald.
Jerry is a Hall of Fame basketball journalist who has covered Kentucky Wildcats basketball since 1981, so it is an honor to be included in his weekly round-up. Producer Wade Smith stole the show with his hilarious “Elvis V. Beatles” metaphor. Read all about it below.
Image via New York Times
Elvis v. Beatles
Wade Smith, the producer for a planned documentary film on the Kentucky-Louisville basketball rivalry, used the heaviest of pop music heavyweights to describe how the competition compels fans to line up on one side or the other.
“It’s either Elvis Presley or the Beatles,” Smith said in putting in context the documentary titled, The Rivalry: Red v. Blue.
Smith, a native of Paintsville, would cast UK as the beloved Elvis and U of L as the Beatles, who he said can claim “an elite group of diehard (fans).”
Since the fall of 2011, Smith and director Rory Delaney have worked on what they intend to be a 90-minute documentary on the UK-U of L basketball rivalry. They hope to have the film in theaters shortly before next season’s UK-U of L game. Each spoke about the good fortune of timing: UK won the 2012 national championship, U of L the 2013 national championship.
“We got totally lucky,” Delaney said.
In what might be a stretch, Smith lumped UK Coach John Calipari’s threat to end the series as another attention-getter. Of course, Calipari asked UK fans to choose which traditional series they could accept ending: UK-U of L, UK-Indiana, UK-North Carolina.
“Even if they didn’t play each other, I think the rivalry would still be there,” Smith said. “It’s so strong.”
Delaney, a native of Louisville now living in southern California, linked Calipari’s threat to end the UK-U of L series to his “soap opera” relationship with Cards Coach Rick Pitino.
“It’s strange,” he said of the idea of ending the UK-U of L series.
Of course, Kentucky did end its series with Indiana. “I still think it’s crazy,” Delaney said. “It’s such an important rivalry as well.”
But that’s perhaps another documentary for another day.
Other rivalries (Duke-North Carolina? Kansas-Missouri?) might seem as compelling as UK-U of L. Key word: Might.
“In other states, they like the football team just as much as the basketball team,” Smith said. “Especially in Eastern Kentucky, it’s all basketball. We didn’t even know we had a football team until this year.”
Delaney and Smith have launched an effort to raise funds to pay for the right to use the school’s logos ($8,000 to each school) and other final costs in making the documentary. Information is at http://redvbluefilm.com/louisville-basketball-rivalry.
Click here to read Jerry Tipton’s full column, entitled “Rupp renovation involves tricky negotiations.”
Click here to back The Rivalry: Red V. Blue on kickstarter.
