Silent, Like a Whisper

I was at work in the middle of the morning rush when I received multiple texts messages all telling me the same thing: Lute Olson had effectively retired as the coach of my Arizona Wildcats. Soon as I got off I made phone calls to people in the know who told me the exact same thing. I rushed home and checked ESPN which confirmed all of this. Lute was done and even though I was prepared for all of this by the ugliness that was last season, it still hurt.

First let me just say that I never thought I’d live to see the day when the Arizona Cardinals were the best thing going in the Arizona sports world. And now that I’ve jinxed them let’s move on to Lute.

I’ve always loved, defended to the death and respected Lute, even after he started to slowly lose it following the death of his wife Bobbi. As corny and unrealistic as it may sound, Lute’s always seemed like a Grandpa to me. I can honestly say that I care a great deal about him and his welfare despite never having actually met him. Lute is one of the greatest college coaches of all time, and despite the petty bickering that’s increased these past few years, he always seemed to do the right thing and have the best interest of others in mind.

My respect for Lute has actually grown through out this whole ordeal of the past few years. It’s obvious now that Lute never had any intention of returning to coaching when he took his leave of absence last year. The only reason he even came back momentarily was to save the program he gave his heart and soul to from falling apart entirely. He went out and got seemingly competent assistants to take over the program and stay around just long enough to hold on to a few recruits and veterans so that this years team will at least be respectable. The fact that he wasted 6 months out of his life just to hold this program together says all you need to know about this man’s character. Now the words from his final press conference (about how he’s tired and wishing he could take back his April press conference when he lambasted the local media) aren’t sweet and reassuring, they’ve now become sad and a little haunting. And yes I’m fully aware that this all maybe coming across as over dramatic, but this is honestly how I feel. You can insert you’re on joke about me caring too much about sports and not having a life here if you want

Lute, I know you won’t be reading this, but thank you. Thanks for everything you’ve done for this town and for me over the years. It pains me that this will be your epilogue. You truly deserved better, despite what that prick Greg Hansen probably thinks. For some reason all I can think of now is the Kent song “747” about a place crash from which I took the title of this post. I feel like that adequately sums up my feelings on this whole situation. Lute, I hope that you find happiness away from the game of basketball in whatever time you have left. I wish you all the luck in the world.

Until We Meet Again