Kentucky basketball fans can’t keep John Calipari’s name out of their mouths. Arkansas fans know a thing or two about jealousy.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. When its effects are most acutely felt, those high on its hallucinogenic properties recall, with varying degrees of ignorance, a history in which problems were fewer and life was simply better. Nostalgia, as a physic, is a Siren, a seduction of half-truths and sometimes downright untruths. The temptation is so strong, its aura is at the basis of political discourse for one modern-day political party in particular, especially strengthening in the last, oh, 10 years or so.
Sentimentality’s draw knows no prisoners, though. Some are more easily beguiled than others, but everyone has bouts of longing, sometimes with fantasy attached. A segment of Arkansas football fans steeped in the far-gone SWC days, for example, still see 10 wins a year as a “should be.” Perhaps the reason I’m so drawn to sports as a journalist is because it isn’t that dissimilar from the area in which I received my degree: political science. Politicians are much like coaches, saying what they need to earn the fanatic’s admiration and trust. And the fanatics, well, they tend toward the hysterical, anyway.