Protest helps half-court shot contest winner
claim his prize
By Jeff Eisenberg | The Dagger – Sun, Jan 8, 2012 10:32 AM EST
When Kentucky freshman
Vincent Swope sank a half-court shot to win a halftime contest during
Saturday's game against
South Carolina, he did a victory lap around sold-out
Rupp Arena and began dreaming of what he could do with the $10,000.
Vincent Swope Little did he know what it would take to make sure he received his money.
One of the organizers of the contest approached Swope in the midst of his celebration with a copy of the contract
he'd signed and a video replay of the shot. The man intimated to Swope that the supermarket chain Kroger might
not be willing to pay the $10,000 since Swope appeared to take the shot a few inches over the mid-court stripe.
"They said when I released the ball I was over the line," Swope said. "There are some pictures where it looks like
I touched the line and some where it looks like I didn't touch the line, but that didn't even cross my mind when
I shot it. I was just thinking, 'I'm $10,000 richer.'" Word that Kroger's
might not pay Swope reached Kentucky
Sports Radio founder Matt Jones during the second half of Saturday's game, so he wasted little time in organizing
a movement on the freshman's behalf. Jones offered to bring Swope on his postgame radio show and encouraged
his 37,000 Twitter followers to tweet in protest with the hashtag
#OccupyKroger.
Not only did hundreds
of
Kentucky fans follow Jones' advice, some also took the movement a step
further. Two Wildcats fans made
#OccupyKroger signs and stood with them in front of the Kroger in Ashland,
Ky.
The entire episode was surreal
for a freshman whose greatest
claim to fame before that was dressing up in a referee's costume for Kentucky
games this season. Swope first did that for the North Carolina game in December
and he's stuck with it ever since
after he received positive feedback from his
fellow students.
