It's the people, like the Committee of 101, that make Rupp Arena what it is -

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The old beast is gradually getting nipped and tucked, slowly being made to look like a modern structure, and before long it will be freed from the metal-box exterior that more closely resembles a massive shipping container than an iconic basketball venue. In the meantime, 42-year-old Rupp Arena really ain’t much to look at.

So what’s all the fuss about? Well, see, the magic of Kentucky basketball and its few-frills home court is in the people, not the place. The Big Blue Nation, an insatiable tribe of fans upon whom John Calipari bestowed the ultimate compliment by quickly recognizing, “You people are crazy,” is what makes the building rock and keeps the program bobbing back to the top of the sport throughout its history. The Wildcats have won their eight national championships with five head coaches, in five decades, powered by one constant: undying loyalty.

That started with Adolph Rupp, whose early dynasty so stirred a passion in the people of this state that it still echoes through the corridors of an arena that bears his name but in which he never coached. What that echo sounds like, though, might surprise you: a twangy, high-pitched squawk from the beak of 80-year-old Dave Trosper, dressed on a recent game day – like the hundreds before it – in his bright blue blazer and belting out, “Anyone need help? Can I help anyone? Anyone need help? Can I help anyone?”

It is an unmistakable chorus if you’ve ever passed by the barbecue concession stand around a corner from the stairs to sections 228 and 230 at Rupp Arena. Trosper has stood in this same spot on game days for about a decade, always actively searching for someone to assist. And that’s just his latest post. He’s been volunteering his time at Kentucky games for more than 50 years. He is one of the earliest and longest-running members of the most unusual booster clubs in college sports: the Committee of 101.

While most fans today see them simply as ushers at games, they’re so much more. They are both an integral piece of the program’s rich history and a tether to it – a direct line from Rupp to Joe B. Hall to Eddie Sutton to Rick Pitino to Tubby Smith to (cough) Billy Gillispie (cough) to Calipari, having long ago declared themselves ready, willing and able to assist every one of those coaches in whatever way was needed (or allowed, which has changed a lot over the years).

“People probably know us better as the Blue Coats,” says Trosper, because of the club’s unique dress code: Kentucky-blue blazer, white dress shirt, a UK-branded tie, black slacks and black dress shoes. Trosper’s jacket is also adorned with a button – HOW MAY I HELP YOU? it asks – for anyone who might not have heard his siren call of service. “When people think of us, I hope what they think is we’ve always been here to help.”

That’s exactly what Rupp thought in 1966 when this booster club started serendipitously with a telegram. A few of them, actually. Bobby Weir and Lyle Coyle, colleagues in the model shop at IBM who shared a love of Kentucky basketball, began sending short good-luck messages to that season’s team, which was affectionately known as “Rupp’s Runts,” on road trips. At first, it was just the two of them, but as other friends at work heard what they were up to, more and more people wanted in on the good wishes.

Their small gesture grew and grew until Weir and Coyle sent what turned out to be a fateful dispatch. The grand plan was to round up 100 people at IBM willing to pay 10 cents apiece to put their names – first and last, a nickel per word back then – on a telegram to Rupp and the team for a late-season away game. That sounded like a nice, round number and a strong show of support, so Weir collected the coins and Coyle headed for Western Union.

“But then one of our buddies came hollering, ‘Wait! I want on there! I want on there!’ ” the now-85-year-old Weir tells The Athletic. “That’s the whole reason we became the 101, because one more guy showed up at the last minute. Lyle wrote something like, ‘From the 101 to No. 1’ and it listed all of us. Coach Rupp must’ve really liked that, because he mentioned us on his television program the next Sunday. He says, ‘My gosh, there must’ve been a thousand names on that thing!’ It’s really what got us started, because when Coach Rupp said that on TV, we thought, We ought to make a club out of this.”

The telegram boys set up a meeting with Rupp and expressed their willingness to be his volunteer army. He happily accepted and the Committee of 101 officially became a service organization in March 1966. When the Runts, led by future Naismith Hall of Fame inductees Pat Riley and Louie Dampier, lost to Texas Western in that famous national championship game (Rupp’s last, as it turned out), the 101 borrowed convertibles from a dealership and met them at the airport to drive the Cats back to campus in style.

They created an annual team banquet, the first of which sold out in a blink and was a smash hit with fans.

“We got together and started thinking of things we could do – kept asking how we could help – and we just did it by the seat of our pants. ‘Let’s do this. Let’s do that.’ And I’m right proud that it really turned into something,” Weir says. “I think it’s unique, really unique, and I think what we did was probably the beginning of what people now call the Big Blue Nation. We were all just a bunch of Kentucky basketball fanatics who were drawn to each other.”

Years later, a man named Steve Reardon would be so impressed by Weir’s years-long streak of attending UK home games that he launched one of his own. He attended every Wildcats game, home and away, and set the still-standing record of 626 consecutive games. Similarly inspired by Reardon, superfan Bob Wiggins nearly caught him – a streak of 615 in a row was interrupted only by a heart attack. He did set the lifetime mark with more than 1,600 Kentucky basketball games attended.

From the Baron to the 101 to the Big Blue Nation, an unbroken chain of obsession.

The original Committee of 101 has grown to more than 300, all volunteering their time to help Kentucky.

“It’s the finest booster group ever organized anywhere,” says Hall, an assistant under Rupp when that famous telegraph arrived, who weaponized the 101 when he took over as coach in 1972. “It was a group of men that were not necessarily wealthy boosters who were ever going to contribute big dollars to any big project, but they were about the most loyal, hardest-working group ever. They helped with anything the coach wanted done.”

What Hall wanted most was help with recruiting. He was not shy about enlisting the Blue Coats, whether it be to feed the families of visiting players in a postgame hospitality room, call prized prospects and make a pitch, bombard their mailboxes with letter-writing campaigns or show up in force at a high school game, decked out in those not-so-subtle blue blazers — all in an effort to make it clear just how much Kentucky fans love their basketball program. Sometimes, Hall would even get a club member to drive him across the state to see a recruit so the busy coach could catch a few winks in the passenger seat.

“Joe worked extremely close with us. He’d assign it, ‘Hey, call this guy,’ ” says 81-year-old Rex Payne, a former IBM employee who did not get in on the original telegram but joined the club the next year. Like Trosper, he’s still working games at Rupp Arena more than a half-century later. His and the 101’s role is a lot different these days. “We would go to a high school game and wear all our stuff and sit in a big group so a player would look up in the stands and see all that blue and go, Wow. We went up to see Kent Benson, which didn’t turn out too well, but Joe did convince him to come down to visit Kentucky and we made a big poster for him. I’d gotten a program from his high school game and he was on the cover, so the (club) president said, ‘Take that and see if you can blow it up.’ We went to a printer here and blew it up a little bit bigger than life-size, so when he got off the plane, we were holding that up and he did quite a double-take.”

Benson was a 6-foot-10 star from New Castle, Ind., who despite all that effort spurned the Wildcats to stay home and play for the Hoosiers. He led them to the 1976 national championship, was a two-time All-American and the No. 1 pick in the 1977 NBA Draft, “but we got our revenge on him,” Payne says, grinning. “We knocked him out of the NCAA Tournament.” Kentucky ruined Benson and IU’s undefeated season in the Elite Eight in 1975, en route to a national championship game appearance for the Wildcats. Notice the use of the word “we” in Payne’s memories.

“I think every member of the 101 feels like we’re a part of UK,” he says, “and that’s why we’re in the club.”

Hall remembers visiting Bob Guyette, Mr. Basketball in Illinois, and his parents pulling out a pile of hand-written letters from Kentucky fans, “so many that it sold him on our program.” Most of them had been part of an organized blitz from the 101, extolling the virtues of life as a Wildcat in basketball-crazed Lexington.

“Then, of course,” Payne says, “the NCAA rules changed and they said, ‘Hey, no more of that, sorry.’ ”

But it was fun while it lasted, and by then the reputation of this Big Blue Nation was successfully established: You people are crazy. And crazy committed. They’ve long since expanded their membership from 101 to more than 300 so that they can adequately staff every Kentucky home football and basketball game – and just about anything else the university or athletic department asks of them. There is often a waiting list to get in the club and a successful application requires two signatures of members in good standing.

All to put in an eight-hour workday at Kroger Field or five-hour shift at Rupp Arena. Without getting paid a dime.

“Just a great bunch of blue-collar workers who love the Wildcats,” says Hall, 90. “I felt like one of them, and they felt like part of us. They’re not just ushers. They’re representatives of the university.”

They’re also keepers of Kentucky basketball history. The biggest perk of being in the club is being in the building on game day. After all the tickets are taken, all the security checkpoints cleared, all the game programs sold and all the paying customers have found their seats – the Committee of 101 handles each of these functions – volunteers can turn their attention to the action on the court.

Randy LeMaster, a 25-year member and the club secretary, typically watches from floor level near the visiting team’s bench. He remembers being close enough it felt as if he could’ve reached out and blocked John Henson’s shot when Anthony Davis swatted it to save a victory over North Carolina during the 2011-12 national title run. LeMaster wears a championship ring from that season, not unlike the one Davis got (minus several diamonds). With the blessing of athletic director Mitch Barnhart, who wanted to include the 101 in the celebration, the committee created its own rings.

LeMaster fondly recalls escorting Tubby Smith to his postgame radio show on the night UK honored him with a less-than-lifelike bobblehead doll. “He made a comment – I’d rather not say what, but let’s just say he didn’t think it looked like him – and it was the funniest thing,” LeMaster says. And oh, boy, that time in 1990 when Dale Brown brought Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Jackson and Stanley Roberts to town and the NCAA sanction-saddled Wildcats beat LSU in a wild 100-95 shootout?

“That’s the loudest Rupp Arena has ever been – ever,” LeMaster says. “Ever. Dale Brown was right in front of me, going absolutely crazy, and I thought this place was going to explode.”

Payne thought the same when Dwight “The Blur” Anderson erased a six-point deficit against Kansas in the final 16 seconds of overtime in 1978. Anderson hit a layup, took a charge, missed a free throw, got it back, hit two free throws, stole an inbounds pass and saved it to Kyle Macy for a tying jumper.

“To go through all those coaches who’ve coached here and see all of those great players who’ve come through, it’s just a dream come true,” says Payne, who believes Kenny “Sky” Walker is the most exciting Wildcat he has ever seen. “I made sure never to miss one of his games.” Of course, he estimates the total number of home games he’s missed in the last five-plus decades remains in the single digits. Why? Allow one of his club brethren to explain.

On Saturday, before Kentucky hosted Utah in the 10th game of what has so far been a disappointing season, a late-arriving fan paused to say hello to a Committee of 101 member near her seat. “The way they’re playing,” she said, “I thought about watching it at home. At least if it gets bad, I can just turn it off and go to bed.”

The helpful man in a blue blazer just smiled.

“Yeah,” he said, “but then you wouldn’t be here. And you can’t beat being here.”

(Photos by Kyle Tucker/The Athletic)

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