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As the No. 1 ranked Kansas University Jayhawks ride their 16-game winning streak into tonight’s ‘SweetSixteen’ matchup against Sleuth’s local Maryland squad, we know their “Official No. 1 Fan” will be watching. After all, fans have been watching her take on all comers for a dozen years! But let’s start from the ‘opening’ tap.
Samantha Ryan first made head•lines on March 3, 2010—her 32nd birthday—when she attended a sold-out basketball contest versus her alma mater’s chief rival…then announced it online: “Ryan’s innocent Twitter post about going to the Kansas-Kansas State game on the KU campus sparked a media frenzy,” read one report, “that made her into the No. 1 story on AOL, in addition to news outlets from the Huffington Post to ESPN writing about her porn-KU connection. Ryan, who began her adult movie career in 2004, scored courtside seats to the game from Kansas assistant coach Kurtis Townsend.” In basketball parlance, for the media it was a “slam dunk”…
“I met her on a flight from Los Angeles to Kansas City, back in December,” the married, father-of-five Townsend told the media the next day. “I had no idea she was a porn star. She was Jamie, a former KU student who said she was a big fan of the Jayhawks. We talked on the flight. I was just being nice and gave her my card and told her to call me if she ever wanted to go to a game. I’ve never seen her since. I wouldn’t know what she looked like.” This courtside duo from a San Antonio NBA game might ‘Spur’ his memory…
“I don’t tell people what I do,” the adult actress backed him up. “My job never cameup. We were on the same flight and talking. I was Jamie, not Samantha Ryan.” That would be Jamie Katherine Mance, who matriculated at Kansas for 3 semesters from 1995-96 and says, “I bleed Jayhawk spirit” {write your own joke]. But then why did she tweet—an hour before the game—under her porn name? “I don’t know,” said the star of over 150 adult films at the time {and now with 557 titles under her belt}. “I have like 2,000 followers {and now 47 thousand!}. I’m not famous or anything. I didn’t think it was a big deal.” Until, that is, SammyRyRy tweeted: “Coach Townsend kicks major ass!”
“At the time of the game KU was ranked No. 2 and K. State was No. 5,” she explained—romantic Ryan knows a thing or two about ‘Rivals’ and generally prefers that cozy number to the higher figure (above). ‘It was the final home game of the season, the most special night of the year. I knew it was going to be a historic game {actually, um, a blow out for her Jayhawks, 82-65}. The worst seat was going for $200 from scalpers and I couldn’t afford to fly there {she was the proverbial ‘Not in Kansas anymore,’ having up•rooted to California} and buy a ticket to the game. So I figured at that point I would at least ask him, seeing as how he saw my passion for KU basketball.” Which ‘kick-ass’ Coach Townsend even points out to his star player below.
“He was nice enough to help me out,” the heroine of Butt Pirates of the Caribbean shrugged, and her benefactor was happy to ass•ist: “You can waste your time making this into something it is not,” he reiterated to reporters, “but all I can say is that I do great things for people.” And did the sexy star of Lick Between the Lines do anything for him? “Best Birthday Present Ever!” she tweeted hours after the contest climaxed. “Can you say, I owe ya one!” One what?!?
“She gave him a BJ,” read the very first comment on KC/ChiefsPlanet.com. “It’s the only logical explanation.”
All we know is that she admits giving hima…call: “He wanted to let me know everything was OK,” Ryan relates about their conversation a week later. “He wasn’t losing his job. I felt horrible and apologized. I was bawling” (only in her job does she make the third letter an ‘L’ instead of a ‘W’) because the press made it out to be something it wasn’t. This is my team, my school. Now I want them to go win the national championship.”
Which is what they’re poised to do at the moment…with even President Obama picking the team to go all theway in his annual ‘Barackatology’ for 2016. Having twice unsuccessfully predicted the Jaywalks would win—in the year Ryan hit the headlines (2010) and the next season—Obama said of the head coach of Kansas: “Bill Self owes me.” Owes him whom?
“He will probably blame me for ruining his pool if things don’t work out,” Self smiled…but Samantha has total confidence in the coach: “He is a modern-day Superman,” she tweeted 3 weeks after her courtside controversy. “So, in the end, it’s all about BILL SELF! Woot!” {computer slang for ‘Want One Of Those’}. And clearly the solo star of 2007’s Masturbation Mayhem 1 {the first of a trilogy} is “all about” SELF LOVE: he puts two fingers up…and she puts two fingers down!
“I’m very talkative on planes,” Ryan revealed about approaching Self’s assistant in the air. “Toward the end of the flight we got on the topic of KU and I started rattling off my stats—she “can recite past Kansas games, scores and even player’s uniform numbers over the years matter-of-factly” {like, off the top of her head?}. And rather than being ‘behind the 8 ball’ when asked, Sammy RyRy shows off knowledge of her college with her version of basketball pool: recalling the center on KU’s last title team in 2008, #24 Sasha Kaun…
…as well as this year’s star who scored a career high to lead the Jays in their opening round NCAA tourney win, Sviatoslov Mykhailiuk from the Ukraine. He’s wearing number 10…she isn’t.
“You’ve got some balls,” her BFF since high school, hairdresser Kelley Blond, told the actress after the ticket furor…but at Shawnee Mission Northwest High in Kansas—she’s listed among their most ‘Notable Alumni’ on Wikipedia—Samantha says she “was painfully shy growing up until I became a member of a world class color guard and really had no choice but to come out of my shell.” Indeed, she won her very own national championship in the annual Color Guard Competition—the performance dance equivalent of highly advanced cheerleading (at right below…and then after she came out of her shell).
“I was a very hard-working kid,” the blond beauty then known as Jamie Mance understates. “I got good grades and just wanted to do my best.” In fact, she “got nothing but straight A’s and was even valedictorian” of her 1996 graduating class. But she’d only strip for photos in the privacy of her own home…
“I had no choice but to get over my shyness” in order to cheer in the color guard—her parents and brother even took out an ad in the senior yearbook urging Jamie to “Run with confidence as your loved ones cheer you—from the grandstands of life.”
Proud nurse Merry Carol Mance bought another ad in which she and a fellow mother shared their belief that “A front side always has a back side” and “When the mind is ready - the teacher appears.” Daughter Jamie would come to learn that in time…eventually emulating her high school’s mascot and team nickname: the Cougars.
Mom also advised that “You must face the music before you may ever lead the band”...and her child took that to heart: “I’ve been playing piano for over 22 years,” the rechristened Ryan revealed in 2009—the year she was amazingly featured doing just that on the cover of the lesbian classic Twisted Passions 6: “The standout is the approximately 3½ minutes of bonus footage that features Samantha Ryan’s piano playing and singing skills,” raved XCritic. “In this movie, she portrays a piano teacher who not only tickles the ivories of the musical instrument, but also those of her female students.” So when a reluctant Ryan finally made the transition from girl-girl to boy-girl films 3 years later, she went from pianist to penis (below right).
“I’ve never had formal voice lessons,” Samantha says, “it’s always something that just came naturally to me.” And she’s kept it ‘natural’ ever since…
“I also played the flute {ahem} when I was in high school and the band used to tune to my B flat, because I have perfect pitch. Nowadays she’s a perfect 32B flat.
When Kansas failed its fans—and Obama—by losing to lesser teams in the 2010 and 2011 tournaments, one rabid rooter wrote: “Once again the Jayhawks screwed me. And it certainly seems that KU alum are popping up in a profession known for screwing. In other words, being a porn star gets you on the VIP list for tickets in Lawrence these days. If Kansas had any smarts, they would recruit the porn star alum as a gag-reflex management coach [Coach Townsend remains their main recruiter]. Until the Jayhawks learn to swallow, any bracket with them going past the second round isn’t worth spit.”
“I love that I can drive a man wild with my skills!” Samantha gushes. “I love giving blowjobs!!” And what sort of guy does she go for? “A sexy man is tall, dark and handsome baby! Hate to be so cliché, but it’s just what I like.” Like this maybe?
The Jayhawk jawbreaker—who would have graduated in the Class of 2000 and has shelves full of b-ball memorabilia in her home—even posted an in your face video on YouTube entitled “Top 5 Reasons Being a Kansas Fan is Better Than Being a Kentucky Fan.”
Beginning with “when I’m not making friend on airplanes,” the KU cutie concludes this about UK, “The No. 1 reason it’s better to be a Kansas fan than a Kentucky fan is: [Phi Beta Kappa Wildcat fanatic] “Ashley Judd was in the movie Kiss the Girls. I was in the movie Girls Kissing Girls. Which would you rather see?”
How hard would it be to work in one more constructive reason?
“The Lakers have Jack Nicholson, Kentucky basketball has Ashley Judd,” noted KUSports.com in March 2010. “And now, finally, after all these years of basketball dominance, Kansas University has a celebrity fan. Porn star Samantha Ryan reportedly has racked up 151 films (compared to a mere 49 for Meryl Streep) and has even directed one title.” That would be her 2007 opus, the cleverly named Sorority Sluts: Iota Eta Pi. One can only guess what Jamie Mance got up to at Kansas where she pledged Chi Omega…
Her chapter adopted the Greek letter Lambda—earlier adopted as the symbol of lesbian rights—so “Oughta Eat a Pie” would seem right up their alley. Reads one review: “The pledges of Iota Eta Pi have been welcomed to the sorority house, where they discover that every problem is resolved by lesbian sex. When two pledges complain about an initiation involving whipped cream and pacifiers, big sister Samantha Ryan disciplines them by having the pair strip and eat her pussy in the bathtub.”
“A talented musician, Samantha loves to sing and play the piano, writing songs in her spare time,” begins an early bio from Wicked Pictures. “She also loves Skydiving [make that muff-], the Kansas Jayhawks and Texas Hold ’em, once even appearing at the World Series of Poker.” Sam shows her poker face and her Hold ’em tips below…
We won’t raise the subject of hole cards or, god forbid, the flop.
Which brings us to the stunning similarity between the terms used in basketball and porn—Samantha’s two favorite pastimes. In addition to the obvious parlance like penetration and slamming it in, there’s finding anoutlet, box out, spreadthe floor, stop and pop, turnover—i.e., pick (a position) and roll, tip in (e.g., ‘I promise I’ll just put the tip in’), around the perimeter, head fake (when she’s not really into it) and ‘in transition’ (nowadays a euphemism for ‘crossover’).
As with poker, porn has a problem with flopping (basically a dead ball)…which is why they employ ‘fluffers’ {akin to ‘equipment managers’ in college hoops}. And if a sex scene climaxes with a foul shot (e.g., in her eye), the female performer might try to block it—or remain beyond the arc. Harder to avoid, though, if it’s a double-double (aka ‘a foursome’), to say nothing of a triple-double (or sixth man) in a gang bang. And we won’t even get into ‘Diaper Dandies’ {come to think of it, Dick Vitale would the perfect porn name for a stud} or ‘moving your pivot foot.’
Yet those phrases wouldn’t even make Sleuth’s Top Ten of terms shared by the lexicons of lust and lay-ups. Which he brackets below in descending order of seeding (with Samantha and her Kansascohortsplaying the main parts):
10. REBOUND – officially defined as ‘gaining possession after a missed shot’
9. HAND CHECKING – illegal contact by a defensive player impeding movement by an opponent
8.BALL HANDLING – done by the player with possession, usually the point guard at the start of a play
7.PALMING – carrying the ball {which they never call!}
6.GOING BACKDOOR – sneaking behind a defender who’s not looking to receive a pass near the basket
5. RIM – the hoop from which the net is suspended; a barely missed shot is said to have ‘rimmed out’
4.SHOOTING – the act of throwing the ball toward the hoop
3. FINGER ROLL– a type of underhand lay-up shot where the ball is curled off the tips of the hand
2. NOTHING BUT NET – said when a shot ‘swishes’ without touching the rim
In Samantha’s case, this would be “Nothing but Fishnet’…and in her adult world, “Nuttin’ but Net”
1. DRIBBLING - process by which an offensive player repeatedly bounces the ball off the floor
AND ONE – since we’re now in the bonus, here’s the ultimate ‘shot’ in both professions:
FACIAL – a slam dunk so hard that the defensive player underneath gets it in the face
So what is Samantha Ryan ‘up to’ these days? Having retired from the industry in 2013, she had her earlier-earned real estate license to fall back on…and is currently selling houses in exclusive Orange County—under her real name but with no photo in the frame! “I just hope that more and more people will recognize my talents,” she said late in her porn career, “and that more doors will continue to open for me!” Though perhaps old habits continue to die hard…
