ATLANTA – A week after suffering a horrific, compound fracture leg injury on national television, complete with exposed bone, and mere days after his Cardinals won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Louisville guard Kevin Ware has largely disappeared from the consciousness of society at large.
Teammate Russ Smith, who averaged 22 points a game in the tournament, said the title was a group effort. “We got a great bunch of guys here” said Smith, as the Cardinals cut down the nets in victory. “All eleven guys on this team chipped in and got us the win.” When informed that there was a twelfth man on the team as of last week, Smith replied “Oh yeah, what’s his name with the leg. I almost threw up when I saw that. Whatever happened to that guy?”
Though the school created the popular ‘Rise to the Occasion” t-shirt – complete with the ‘s’ in ‘Rise’ switched to ware’s number 5 – and sold it for $24.99, few have seen or heard from the seriously injured college student since a press conference soon after his injury. “Yeah” said Associate Athletic Director Brent Seebohm, scratching his chin. “I remember bringing the press by for a photo op, and then the camera crew for Letterman. But after I ushered them out I don’t know what happened to him. Is he still in the hospital? Somebody should pick him up.”
Coach Rick Pitino, whois now the first man to win national championships at two different schools, seemed to have a vague recollection of the guy with the exposed bone. “Whatever happened to him? Did he declare [for the NBA draft]?”
Pitino, who got $425 thousand dollars in bonuses related to the tournament, added that if the kid were still around campus he would pitch in to help cover any medical bills. “Wouldn’t be the first time I slipped someone cash under the table for ‘health insurance’”.
At a pep rally to celebrate the champion Cardinals, student body president Helen Barr dedicated the victory to the memory of “that player with the gross leg’.” When informed that the player was not, in fact, dead, she shrugged and signaled for the marching band to play the school fight song.
As of press time, Ware is anonymously rolling around the Louisville campus in a wheelchair.
