So much has changed about college sports in the past five years.
Too much.
This isn’t to say that every instance of change was bad. Athletes receiving fair compensation for their name, image and likeness and being granted the same freedoms as coaching staffs has generated plenty of controversy, but it was a necessary, sound and pretty inevitable shift.
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What’s bad is that a storied conference that was over a century old lies dead with a zombified version 0f it bearing the same name knocking on the doors of Mountain West athletic departments a la Herbert White in “The Monkey’s Paw.” You’d like it to be the same, but it isn’t.
Its former teams have found new homes, mostly, but much of the regionality that made it special is gone. Something similar is true for the Big Ten, which now brags about its status as a coast-to-coast league full of members who share a conference but disparate collective history.
Regionality matters in college sports, that’s what’s built it teams and conference into the tradition-stepped pillars that they are. Michigan should play Ohio State, Texas should play Oklahoma, Oregon should play Oregon State and so on and so forth. These fanbases share a series of commonalities and histories that are retold around family television sets and bar counters in the same geographic footprint.
That’s oral tradition. It’s as human as anything gets.
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And it’s why Indiana and Kentucky must play one another in men’s basketball (and other sports too) as long as they’re able.
Indiana sits in a pretty compelling area, geographically speaking, both the state and the university. IU is a member institution of the nation’s foremost Midwestern collegiate athletic conference while being far closer to The South than any of its traditional Big Ten rivals. Nowhere is this more prevalent than the communities along the Ohio River, with one side being Indiana and the other Kentucky.
Hoosiers in Southern Indiana have a lot in common with Kentuckians, moreso than they have with fellow Hoosiers in the state’s northern region (The Region, literally) and around Indianapolis, to an extent.
The two groups share plenty of similarities like regional cuisine, traditions, professions and pastimes. Most important in this case, they share a love for the game of basketball that’s just about unrivaled anywhere else in the country.
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When the sport was in its relative infancy, fans in Indiana and Kentucky packed gyms and fieldhouses to take in the local high school games and occasionally made trips to Bloomington and Lexington to watch the Hoosiers and Wildcats take to the hardwood.
Basketball comes to that part of the country like rolling hills, tenderloin and the waters of the Ohio. Every place has something that makes it special, sets it apart. For there, it’s hoops. In few places has that been made clearer than the men’s basketball programs at Indiana and Kentucky.
The two are among the most storied in the sport, each boasting several national titles. The Hoosiers and Wildcats spent the better part of the 1970s and ‘80s competing at the top of the sport for the sake of claiming more championships than the other.
They played annually in the regular season from 1969-2012 before the series came to a close after 2011. Enough has been written and said about that decision, there’s no need to rehash it. It was an incredibly welcome thawing when the two agreed to restore the series in 2023, albeit for just four games. But that’s not enough.
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Now or later, the series should be extended. Indiana’s Darian DeVries wants it to go on forever. Kentucky’s Mark Pope played for the Wildcats and has spoken about what the program’s traditional rivalries mean in the past.
As previously stated, plenty of things have changed about college sports in the past several years. It wasn’t a sudden thing, we slowly inched our way toward the collapse of a conference at the expense of regionality. Teams have moved conferences, series have been cancelled and broadcast deals have shifted the landscape before.
One of those series was this, Indiana and Kentucky. The two haven’t faced off in the regular season in well over a decade, leaving an entire generation without firsthand experiences in the rivalry. How many more will that be true for as more rivalries expire and college sports grow to further resemble their professional, culturally emptier counterparts?
It’s a travesty. No collegiate sport rewards playing high-stakes non-conference matchups quite like basketball and the fanbases are invested. Both athletic departments have the power to once again make this a fixture in the calendar.
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People have, throughout history, sought to preserve what makes a people or place unique. It’s a responsibility. Why shouldn’t that be true for basketball? Especially here?
The series should return on a full-time basis, for the good of the region, both programs and college sports as a whole.
