Oct. 29, 2002

by Tom Leach * UK Radio Network

Some of his fondest memories of college involve standing in line in the rainto get UK basketball tickets. He remembers his first Kentucky football game,at old Stoll Field, and he can vividly recall gathering around a radio inhis hometown as a boy to listen to Claude Sullivan call the action of theWildcats.

Hardly sounds like someone who fails to understand the important role thatthe athletics department plays in unifying this state and generatingexposure for the school does it? So it’s a good thing that the precedingparagraph describes UK president Dr. Lee Todd.

“When I think about the importance of sports to a university, I alwaysremember a friend of mine at MIT. He did (all his schooling) at MIT and Itold him, ‘Bob, you’ve never been to college. You don’t know what it’s liketo stand in line in the rain to get a ticket to get inside with 20-somethousand fans to cheer for a common purpose.’ That’s a part of college thatI enjoyed as a student. Students need to feel that, to have something tocheer for away from their studies,” said Todd, who remembers working in hislab as a UK professor in March 1978, when the Wildcats beat Duke to end a20-year drought between national basketball championships. He heard aboutthe celebration to welcome the team home and walked over to MemorialColiseum to join the party.

“Many people say it is your front door,” Todd said of the athleticsdepartment.

“One thing I’ve done is to have donors, legislators and corporate executivesto the games. We got a box for the deans last year so they could invitedonors to the games. It’s an event and it does give you a chance to talkabout other aspects of the university. There’s no doubt that sports plays astrong role in keeping your alumni glued to you.”

And Todd says the many Big Blue fans in his hometown of Earlington in WesternKentucky can’t wait for him to come back on his visits, in the hope thathe’ll provide some “inside info” on their beloved Wildcats.

“It’s amazing how much they know about the stats and how we’ve recruited andwho we might be recruiting. I enjoy that part of the job. It created somechallenges for me in the last year, but going to the games is a realhighlight of this job,” noted Todd, whose favorite sport is baseball. Hegrew up as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and later shifted his loyalty tothe Boston Red Sox. In his basement, walls are currently adorned withpictures of three of his sports stars – hockey player Bobby Orr, boxerMuhammad Ali and Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, shown hitting his legendarygame-winning homer to end Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

President Todd (right) poses for a picture with Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart during football’s Fan Day

While having a good grasp of the passion for UK sports, Todd also feels theoverwhelming majority of fans have their priorities in order.

“They do. I’ve gotten e-mails from the people who are just consumed by it,but I would say 98 percent of the messages I got were that they appreciatedwhat I was trying to do,” he said. “I thought I would have people coming atme for trying to injure the competitiveness of our program but I was pleasedthat most people understood what I was trying to do was direct most of ourenergy to the players and the coaches and to get out of the newspapers (forbad news).”

Todd says the pool hall was the only available hangout in his small hometownso he spent many hours of his youth there, after finishing a daily paperroute. And he vividly recalls how the activity would stop during key pointsin a UK sports broadcast, with everyone huddled around an old radiolistening to Claude Sullivan call the action.

While in graduate school at MIT in Boston, Todd says he found a location on ahigh spot outside the city where he could tune in games on WHAS on his carradio.

Early in his tenure, Todd says he made it a point to seek out coach TubbySmith. The president wanted to explain that his push to improve UK’sacademic standing was an effort to get that part of the university on a parwith the standard of excellence in the men’s basketball program. And Todd isconfident that UK can have major success in football, too.

“This could be a football state (too). My wife, I almost lost her in thatTennessee game (last year). When Champ Kelly was running down the sidelines(on a long touchdown reception) – she almost went over the railing,” hesaid. “This can be a two-sport university – and we’ve got other sports, too,that we’re going to pump up.

“Football doesn’t have to be a second citizen up here,” he continued. “One ofmy goals is to take some of the knowledge we have with our researchers andthe competitiveness that we have in Kentucky and say ‘let’s focus on gettingoff the top of the list for diabetes or lung cancer.’ I’m hoping that willwork. Tubby and Guy have both agreed to help.”