Sincerity In The Wake of Sarcasm And Satire

10 days ago, deep in the heart of the "Buzz to A&M" foolishness, our fearless leader Rubie Q sent me a direct message on Twitter:

You know who really likes their sports? People from Texas.

He was right.  Lots of A&M fans came running to our humble website to see what we had to say about our coach not leaving.

Flash forward to yesterday.  Turns out people from Kentucky like their sports even more, particularly college basketball.  Since we had so many guests yesterday, I think it'd be flat out rude to not thank them by name for their patronage.

So thank you to Aaron's UK Basketball Blog, the message boards at Cats Illustrated.com, Kentucky Sports Radio.com, and the forums at Kentucky Sports Network for pointing out my article yesterday.

Sadly, a heavy majority of Kentucky fans took what I wrote very seriously.  I don't know how to explain to them that I was mocking Pat Richter's claims of conspiracy theories.  When I sat down to write yesterday, all I knew was that 1) Richter was talking about the Big Ten/Eleven/Twelve-ACC Challenge, 2) The Big East is in an ongoing series with the SEC, 3) Kentucky is the biggest traditional power in the SEC, 4) Marquette and Kentucky have never played in the Big East-SEC Invitational, and 5) Marquette has won 3 straight NCAA Tournament games over Kentucky.  That was more than enough to throw around some half baked conspiracy accusations to make fun of Richter's ludicrous claims.  I figured putting the link at the bottom and accusing Roy Williams of "tyranny" made it obvious enough.

I was wrong.  Oh well.  I have to say, if Marquette ends up hosting Kentucky in the Big East-SEC Challenge in the 2012-13 season, I am taking complete credit for it happening.

After the jump, I do a little Fire Joe Morgan work on those 4 sites I mentioned.  Feel free to peruse them for the rest of the treasure that is Kentucky fans taking themselves WAY too seriously.

From Aaron's UK Basketball Blog, Anonymous (way to own your comments, guy) posted:

Maybe they want to play us so they can be seen on ESPN.

Yup. 17 games on ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPNU last year and we need a game against Kentucky to get broadcast.

From Cats Illustrated.com, brianboone99 writes:

haha half the posts in the comments section are from the "writer" of this "article".

Should have tried reading some of them.

From K-Town Kat:

Yeah, we're soooo scared of those ugly uniforms.

HOW DARE YOU, SIR.

From coolcobramatt:

Dwyane Wade is not walking through that door

True, he's dunking on Marquis Estill through that door.

From kyboy1998:

I'm glad we don't play them. Nobody beats UK like Marquette.

Points for honesty, sir. UNLESS YOU'RE BEING SARCASTIC, TOO?

Over 5 hours after the thread was started, a wise gentleman named "hoodro" manages to unlock my intricate puzzle.  Didn't stop people from continuing to miss the joke, though.

Over at Kentucky Sports Network.com, the original poster, "Jim Proffitt," has this theory:

I imagine a displaced U of L fan, now living in Wisconsin, is ultimately behind this ridiculous post.

Riiiiight.  And even when someone tries to explain it to him, this is the reaction:

a couple of those paragraphs are pretty fact-filled and the update he's now added at the bottom of the blog leads me to think he's at least 51% serious.

Lousy jerk facts getting in the way of my jokes.

This brings us to Chris Thomas at Kentucky Sports Radio.com.  Oh, Chris.  First this:

Let’s get this out of the way first: in the comments section, Andy states his intent of getting comments from riled up UK fans.

Should have been a clue.  Then this:

Andy claims his courage to call out UK was inspired by Wisconsin’s AD dissing Roy Williams (first sign of the trolling intent).

Well, it was actually the last thing that I wrote.  But you're the only person to mention Pat Richter in the initial post.  How did you read what I wrote, then read the Richter link, and then not catch on? You even pointed out my mention of Milwaukee. Did you not realize that Milwaukee is in Wisconsin, and therefore Marquette and UW-Madison are rivals? 

Obviously, this guy doesn’t believe this crazy statement,

It's like you're highlighting all the clues.  DUDE.  You didn't actually use a highlighter on the screen, did you?

The best part about Mr. Thomas' piece is that within 20 minutes of him posting that, he's already getting buried for not realizing that Marquette has a more viable basketball tradition than Wisconsin, and then 3 comments later, the joke is pointed out to him.  Doesn't stop him from trying to defend himself, though.  Good job to KSRisajoke, Alex, Hawkalicious, Really?, OregonCat, and LikeBernie for fighting the good fight in the comments there.