Cardinal Couple

 AS THE SOLE WRITER, TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK? 

(Still flocking in from around the nation...thank you readers). 

After 20 years of pumping this daily site out, with a host of others. it's back to where I began. By myself, doing solo duty. 

For whatever reason, and there have been a slew of them...I've had over a dozen writers here come and go. I am retired now, I have kidney failure, which means I am hooked up to a dialysis machine three times a week, four hours a time. I no longer attend live events. There are times I have to use a walker or wheelchair to do daily things. At age 70, I read almost daily of friends or acquaintances dying. It used to be attending weddings. Now it's attending funerals 

There has also been a change of the guard down at UofL. The independent writers are not as prevalent as they used to be.  

And if you don't believe it, check it out. Look at Media row or the Press Box . 

I look back to the premise  I began the site on the premise of the joy and excitement of UofL sports. And, back then, in 2006, there were a lot of exciting things going on down on the Belknap Campus. Tom Jurich and Julie Hermann were on campus as VIce President and Director of Athletics (Jurich) and Senior Associate Director of Athletics and senior Women's Administrator (Hermann).  Tom Collen was the head WBB coach (Walz was still a year away). The KFC YUM! Center was four years away. Sandy Pearsall was in her sixth year on campus as softball coach. Karen Ferguson Dayes was in her sixth year as head women's soccer coach. 

But, it always went back to the student-athletes here at Cardinal Couple. And, oh...the friendships I have made and students I have covered in contests and interviewed. 

And, I sometimes wonder if what I churn out here daily means anything to anyone anymore? I get e-mails of encouragement and criticism. I lost my photographer due to administration pressure.  I have been shunned on campus because someone hijacked my now deleted Twitter account and put up some objectionable stuff. It's funny...these days a coach can go into a string of expletives and then go on as nothing happened...but, the unpaid writer gets ostracized for something he didn't even do  

It's like a former UofL women's lacrosse player told me so many years ago. 

"You can get knocked down, slammed around, and bloodied but it just takes that one shining moment to bring you back." 

And, maybe that's why I still do it. It's always been about the students. 

It always will be. 

So..what is your opinion on all this? Feel free to e-mail me at cardinalcouple@twc.com or leave a comment here. I'll keep your responses private. It's like the old Alan Parsons song Games People Play where they ask..."Where do we go from here?"  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLi7Ljcy6n8

I'll be reading ...and thinking. 

paulie