Calipari supporting rival? Look again
A few years ago, a group of casual college basketball fans lost their minds when they walked by Kentucky coach John Calipari while aboard a vacation cruise ship.
They worked up the nerve, approached and asked for a picture. The Wildcats were really good that season. They reached the Final Four and were playing for a spot in the national title game that day. The game was on a nearby TV.
Calipari was coaching that game — not on the cruise ship.
When the group asked David Winkler for a photo, it was not an isolated incident. It happens all the time. Winkler was born, raised and lives in Louisville. He loves the Cardinals. He looks like Calipari.
“It’s all right,” said Winkler, who maintains a healthy sense of humor about the mistaken identity. “He’s not a bad-looking guy, so I’ll take it as a compliment.
“For every one person that walks up and says something, there’s at least 10 or 15 more that are double-taking. I can feel them watching me. I’ve watched guys elbow their buddies as they’re walking by. They all try to be cool about it, but I can feel it. It’s gotten to that point.”
At least that group on the cruise ship didn’t boo or hiss at Winkler. That’s what happens during football games at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. Winkler, a land surveyor by trade, has season tickets. There’s a camera operator who knows where he sits and gets in position once or twice a season to broadcast Winkler and his wife, Linda, on the kiss cam.
“If they keep me on there long enough, then they all start booing,” Winkler said. “If I was Calipari, I would be up in a box somewhere. I wouldn’t be in the seats. People don’t think about those things. They don’t think. They react.”
Winkler turned 56 on Tuesday. Calipari is 57. They both have slicked-back hair with a little gray at the temples. And here’s a twist — Winkler attended UK in the early 1980s and studied engineering. He was in school when Kenny Walker and Sam Bowie were just getting started.
But he remained loyal to Louisville.
Now, Kentucky fans approach while Winkler is eating dinner and wish him good luck and tell him to have a good season. He never signs an autograph or poses for a photo without telling the truth, but sometimes he simply says thanks and shakes hands.
“They thought they met somebody, and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings,” he said. “I try to be respectful for it.”
Calipari said he recently upset a lady at a restaurant when he declined to pose for a photo because he was eating with his wife.
“My wife looked at me like, ‘She’s mad at you,’ ” Calipari said on his podcast last week. “I went up to her later and said, ‘Do you want to take the picture?’ She said, ‘No, I’m good.’ ‘OK, thank you. I’m fine.’ ”
One year, Winkler and his wife attended a Halloween party dressed as Coach Cal and Kentucky superfan Ashley Judd. He wore a blue UK tracksuit, and she was dressed in a Wildcats T-shirt and hat and carried a large blue foam finger. They won the prize for best costume and took pictures with people all night.
“We might as well have fun with it, right?” Linda said.
Might as well. Because there’s no avoiding the attention. Last week, when the Winklers were shopping, three female Kentucky fans “had a conniption fit” when they saw who they believed to be Calipari.
Winkler, as he often does, was wearing a Louisville sweatshirt. He has pointed that out to people that approach — why would Calipari dress in red and display the Cardinals logo?
“They’re like, ‘That would be something he would do to hide from everybody,’ ” Winkler said.
For Winkler, there is no hiding. Eating dinner recently at Old Chicago in Louisville, Linda noticed a man at the bar looking at David. Word spread, and right down the row, everybody turned and looked to see for themselves.
Such is life for the man who looks like the most polarizing figure in the state.
“Sometimes it’s a pain, but it’s funny,” Winkler said. “I don’t try to profit off it, either, although people keep telling me I could.”