A Letter To David Padgett

Dear Mr. David Padgett:

Let me be the first to apologize on behalf of all Kansas Jayhawk basketball fans for our actions in the fall of 2003/spring of 2004. It was classless of everybody to treat you the way we did. To take a fresh-faced, eager-to-please 18 year old with a neatly-tailored game and equally neatly-gelled haircut, and mercilessly ride him until he chooses to transfer, well....that was just wrong. Our bad. I will say that I personally had no part in the newspaper trashing you, or your fellow students bad-mouthing you behind your back (and to your face, I'm told), but I am surely not innocent. I can recall many instances where I was sitting in my living room, screaming at you to get your head in the game. I am as guilty as anyone.

However.....

Let's get one thing out on the table, David: you were kind of a little bitch. Let's be honest. You were a highly touted McDonald's All-American. You always had your hair spiked and gelled. You looked like you had just arrived at the game straight from your frat's spring formal, and you acted like it too. You chose number 44, which, along with your physical appearance and on-court abilities, immediately reminded every KU fan of Eric Chenowith (if there is ONE player in KU's storied history you DO NOT want to be compared to, it's Eric Chenowith.) You picked up silly fouls and whined to the refs, then looked over to the bench with a confused expression; very similar to how one frat brother would look at another when it was taking an inordinate amount of time for the hot-but-shy freshman girl to start getting sleepy after you put roofies in her keg cup. You complained about Bill Self not letting you "play your game" which was being a face-up power forward. It is at this point that I will remind you that you are currently playing center, with your back almost exclusively to the basket, even when you catch the ball at the top of the key.

But all that is neither here nor there, David. That was yesterday, this is today. Yesterday you were a freshman struggling to find his niche, under the microscope, playing for one of the top programs in the country; today you are the most important player on an Elite 8 team coached by the legendary Rick Pitino. Yesterday you were a boy; today you are a Man. Yesterday we were at odds with each other; today we share a common goal. Today yourself and KU fans alike are united in wanting to beat Roy Williams and the North Carolina Tar Heels.

Take out all your aggressions, which have been buried deep in your psyche for four years now, and unleash them on UNC. Take the faces of all those fans, classmates, boosters, and media who verbally tore you apart for the better part of 6 months of your life, and put those faces on your opponent tonight. That's not Ty Lawson coming into YOUR lane for a layup, that's the newspaper writer who called you softer than the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. That's not Tyler Hansbrough you're battling with for a rebound, that's the punk-ass kid in baggy jeans that told you that you "fucking sucked donkey dick, queer!" on your way to your Political Science class. Today is North Carolina's day of reckoning.

So do it David. Don't do it for me, don't do it KU fans all over the country, hell- don't even do it for Louisville. Do it for yourself. You've earned it.