Coach Cal in Paducah

John Calipari brought the NCAA men's basketball championship trophy to Paducah on Friday night, and, man, it was great.

It's hard to judge the size of a crowd. It felt like a lot. It felt like more than the number of people who would attend the Paducah Summer Festival on a Thursday night--but maybe fewer than the number that would attend on a Saturday night. I'm going to guess there were 1,500 people in the parking lot of the Kroger on Park Avenue/U.S. 60 to greet Coach Cal, his wife, Joe B. Hall and the rest of the crew from Lexington on their tour of Kentucky with the trophy.

Whatever the number, the vast majority of folks in the Kroger lot had arrived long before my wife, 3-year-old daughter and I did--at about 7:15, after hitting Pizza Inn's Friday-night buffet ($18 for the three of us with a 20-percent tip, and they made any pizza for the buffet that we requested--even the daughter's olives-only job; 5 stars, highly recommended). WKYX had Tweeted a picture shortly after 5 that showed a substantial line already gathering even that early.

Indeed, by the time we arrived, police had blocked off the lot from more entrants, and so we and dozens of others resorted to parking in the gravel lots near the baseball parks at Bob Noble Park just east of Kroger and then walking over the quarter mile or so to grocery. (It appeared quite a few folks had used the parking lot of Park Avenue Baptist Church, on the west side of Kroger, for the same purpose.)


The bus was scheduled to arrive at 7:30, but it was running a bit late getting out of Owensboro. Instead, it was a local radio DJ, "Bear," who took the stage at 7:30 and asked us to practice a "big western-Kentucky welcome." Apparently, we didn't cheer big enough because he had us practice it again. Then he asked us to cheer for Kroger, and we cheered. Then he asked us to cheer for the local police and emergency-management personnel who were on hand for crowd control, and we cheered. And then he asked us to cheer for the Tilghman High School band and cheerleaders who performed off and on throughout, and we cheered for them, too.

Then there was 30 minutes of mostly nothing.


During this period, my wife and I thought about leaving because we kept on worrying that the daughter was going to get bored and fussy. The worry was unfounded; the daughter seemed to have a blast from beginning to end. She led us in dancing to the band. She led us in petting peoples' dogs. And she led us in playing ring around the rosey. In fact, I saw no one leave early--literally zero. Some played with smartphones. Some boys played football in an open area of the parking lot. Most folks just talked with one another; everyone seemed to know everyone else.


Still, it was chilly, and we might've bailed--if not for a trip inside Kroger to use the restrooms. It gave us a chance to warm up a bit, and, by the time we were finished, they were announcing over the loud speaker inside the store that the bus was on Park Avenue and nearing the lot.

It got pretty loud when they arrived at about 8.


We situated ourselves in front of a big display of petunias in front of the store and behind the stage. The crowd roared as the bus unloaded. Some local dignitary did a very quick introduction and named Coach Cal a "Duke of Paducah," and then Coach Cal got up and thanked his wife, Ellen, for accompanying him and the others on the trophy tour.

Coach Cal talked about the legacy he inherited in becoming the Kentucky coach, and there was a giant roar when he introduced Coach Hall.



And then Coach Cal talked about the sacrifices that various players made this season in order to make the championship possible.





But then the police started getting worried about all of us behind the stage and the fact that maybe we weren't leaving enough room for a fire lane. So those of us behind the stage had to move around the bus and out with the rest of the crowd in the front, and Coach Cal cut it off pretty soon after that, anyway. He was tired. They had already been to Midway, Frankfort, Elizabethtown and Owensboro before arriving in Paducah on Friday. And they had made a huge whip through eastern Kentucky on Thursday. In addition to the scheduled stops, there were impromptu visits to an Etown Shoneys and a Martin McDonald's.

Matt Jones with Kentucky Sports Radio got up and talked the crowd through forming groups of 25 or so to have their pictures made with Coach Cal and the trophy. At this point, we gave up the ghost and retired for the night.

John Wright, who may or may not have been part of the Heath High School Class of 1987 and a reporter for the original Heath Post, wrote in Saturday's Paducah Sun about an 87-year-old Paducah man who celebrated his birthday Friday by coming out to see Coach Cal and the trophy. He said it made him feel young again--"you know, I think I feel 80 today."

I struggled the whole weekend with what to say about this event--whether to write it big and sweeping or small and particular. I've thought about writing something about how big a deal it is when someone big and famous comes all the way to Paducah ("it's so out there," as my wife correctly commented over pizza Friday night). I thought about writing something about how most of the folks at Kroger Friday seemed more intent on thanking Coach Cal than in being entertained (it really wasn't that entertaining of an event, but it sure felt like everyone who went were glad they did). I thought about writing something about earnestness and irony.

I'll leave it with this: It was a festive atmosphere of a particularly Kentucky type. There should be more events where people get together and just say and yell nice things about each other, and I am thankful that I got to go to this one in Paducah.