Editor’s Note: Donnie Russell is a former assistant and fundraiser in the Athletic Department at UofL. He was the play-by-play announcer for basketball in the eighties, and still calls occasional games for women’s basketball and baseball. Donnie was instrumental in hiring Kenny Klein for the university.
Despite having won the national championship in basketball three years earlier, the University of Louisville Athletic Department was not the ideal place to work in 1983. The offices were located in structures resembling old World War II quonset huts that would later be condemned. The area was heavily industrialized and the sewers would often back up during rainy weather.