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Excited SEC Fans Get Party Started Early At Forum

Tribune photo by KATHY MOORE

Kentucky fan Anthony Cobb of Bowling Green, Ky., pitches a bean bag outside the St Pete Times Forum on Thursday.

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By JEFF HOUCK | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 12, 2009

It was three hours before the Kentucky Wildcats were set to tip off Thursday against the Mississippi Rebels in the first game of the 2009 Southeastern Conference men's basketball tournament at the Forum.

Anthony Cobb from Bowling Green, Ky., wouldn't be able to get into the game to take his seat for another 90 minutes. Didn't matter. He filled the time by playing a game of beanbag toss on the plaza outside the west entrance.

"We were hoping Cornhole would be set up here so we could make fools of ourselves," said Cobb, 36, as he pointed across the way to Chad Garrett, his friend since childhood. "At Kentucky football games, there are hundreds off these games set up everywhere."

The two follow their beloved Wildcats each year wherever the SEC tournament is played. This year, their wives dropped them off at 10 a.m. at the arena and drove to the beach without them.

"We told them to pick us up at midnight," Cobb said. "This is where we'll be until then."

Cobb and Garrett were in good company. The plaza was half-filled before noon with hundreds of University of Kentucky fans decked out in Wildcat blue who were eager to cheer on the team. Pawprint tattoos decorated hundreds of faces. Several babies wore blue onesies with UK logos on the chest a good 17 years before they could apply for admission to the university.

Kenny Breeze, 46, a dairy farmer from Maysville, Ky., showed up two hours before doors opened. He and his wife, Nancy, waited on folding chairs with friends Jed and Val Sour, Timmy Reece and Troy and Lesley Martin. Breeze surveyed the crowd as he stood with his arms crossed.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "I had to get out. Too much anticipation for today's game."

The Breezes have been anticipating this trip for six years. They sold their dairy business last summer.
They are "blowing off steam" in Tampa before they go back to Maysville and start another company.

Part of Breeze's anxiety Thursday morning stemmed from not knowing how the Wildcats would do in the tournament. The team has floundered in recent weeks and racked up an atypical 12 losses for the season. Breeze thinks a coaching change is in order.

"They may do real good today or they may flop," he said. "If we lose, I'll be alright, but I won't like it."

Standing out amid the ocean of Kentucky blue were Mississippi State fans Kenneth and Janice Carter of Ripley, Miss., who proudly wore the maroon and white school colors. They drove 12 hours so they could bring their 10-year-old grandson, Matt Crowder, to see the Bulldogs play against Georgia today in the tournament.

"It's something he'll remember the rest of his life," his grandmother said.

The family's fever for Mississippi State University runs deep. Two of the Carters' daughters graduated from MSU, as did two of their sons-in-laws. The couple paid roughly $1,000 in tickets alone to come to cheer the team in Tampa with their grandson, who wore matching basketball jersey, shorts and Bulldogs cap.

"We have a financial investment," she joked.

The couple travels each year to see Mississippi State play in the SEC tournament. They were in the stands at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta last year when an F2-category tornado hit the arena during the team's game against Alabama, ripping a hole in the ceiling.

"We won that game," she said. "Maybe we'll have another good-luck tornado today."

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324.

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