Louisville CardFile: Selection Sunday Blues

joaniecardAnd the day keeps on remindin’ me/ There’s a hellhound on my trail/ There’s a hellhound on my trail/ There’s a hellhound on my trail

Blues icon Robert Johnson, who bore that burden, legend tells us, sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of the Delta, then returned to his old haunts, a master of lyricism and guitar playing.

Not long thereafter at a still tender age, Johnson, it is said, met his demise at a rural juke joint, after drinking some poisoned whiskey, handed him by a married woman he’d been flirting with.

It is Selection Sunday, the most sacred day of the year in this epicenter of college hoops fanaticism. The Louisville Cardinals, players, coaches, loyal fan base, are by university self imposition sitting on the sideline, outside looking in, faces pressed to the candy shop window, as the 68 chosen savor the sweets, learn their path to a title.

The L1C4 Nation has a hellhound on its trail.

Like Robert Johnson, Andre McGee sold his soul to the devil.

He is not the only one poisoned.

 * * * * *

This day dawned an hour early, gloomy, the skies crying.

It started, for Cardinal fans, not with the annual nervous anticipation of seed and situs, the beckoning of a 6:00 PM sacrament, but with another ESPN “Outside The Lines” regurgitation of the scandal that gave birth to that rabid hellhound.

Andre McGee, mum, driving his Uber in KC. Katina Powell with a new doo, but nothing new to say. Emily Bingham vs. Rick Pitino. “Coach Mike.” No Comments and prevarications.

And nothing new. Nothing we haven’t heard and fretted about since this lurid tale first came to light months ago, with the publication of a hastily written and poorly substantiated tome.

 * * * * *

This, the holiest of days, is hollow.

Louisville basketball is a lurid scrawl across the bottom of the screen, as the pundits ponder and the bracketologists babble.

And I, hellhound howlin’ at my door, got dem ol’ beyond the bubble, sittin’ on the sidelines, no bracket to fill, blues fallin’ down like hail, Selection Sunday Blues.

— Seedy K

 

 

2 thoughts on “Louisville CardFile: Selection Sunday Blues

Comments are closed.