Several faculty members at the University of Kentucky want the name of Rupp Arena changed.
Rupp Arena is named after legendary Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp, who made the Wildcats a national powerhouse and brought four national titles to Lexington. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
Faculty members from the African American and Africana Studies department stated the following in part in a letter:
The University should rename Rupp Arena. The Adolph Rupp name has come to stand for racism and exclusion in UK athletics and alienates Black students, fans, and attendees. The rebuilding of the arena and the convention center offer an opportunity to change the name to a far more inclusive one, such as Wildcat Arena. In addition, the University should survey all campus buildings and remove all names of enslavers, Confederate sympathizers (such as William C.P. Breckinridge), and other white supremacists.
The biggest problem with Rupp was the fact that he didn’t integrate the Wildcats for a long time, and he famously lost to Texas Western in the 1966 title game, which is covered in the movie “Glory Road.” According to A Sea of Blue, the Wildcats “started to recruit black players actively in the mid 1960’s.”
As I say with all these name change proposals, we should be very careful before we rush down this path. At the end of the day, it’ll be for Kentucky to decide.
It’ll be for the people involved with the Wildcats to make a decision on Rupp Arena.
Here’s what I’ll say and it’s what I’ll always say. Judging people from decades ago by the standards of today is a very bad idea.
Under that standard, we have to wipe away our entire history. Rupp started coaching at the beginning of the 1930 season and was done in the early 1970s.
Guess what, folks? The world was a little different in 1930 in Kentucky than it is right now. All-white sports teams used to be a thing.
That’s the way the world worked. Think I’m kidding? Alabama’s football team didn’t integrate until the 1970s! Should Bear Bryant be scrubbed from the history books? Of course not!
Adolph Rupp is one of the greatest basketball coaches that the world has ever seen. He won four national titles for Kentucky and he did it in a different era.
Yes, he didn’t integrate Kentucky for the vast majority of his career. Does that make him the devil? I’m not so sure it does. It seems like it was a product of the times, and he shouldn’t be erased for it. If you get rid of Rupp’s incredible legacy, then you have to get rid of Bear Bryant and every other coach you led all-white teams decades and decades ago.
It just doesn’t make sense.
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We’ll see what Kentucky decides to do, but this is a dangerous path to travel. Judging historical figures by the standards of today is incredibly stupid.