Calipari Looking for New Contract

A couple of days ago it was reported that University of Kentucky coach John Calipari was interested in the Chicago Bulls job. Yesterday he refuted that report. Today it came out that Calipari and the UK bigwigs were working on a new, richer contract. Expect an agreement to be reached in the near future.

I write a lot about coaches (obviously). I'm not completely sure why I focus on the coaches so much. Maybe it's just that time of year where the interesting news is coach-centric. But part of it, for sure, is that I think the impact a coach can have (positively or otherwise) is vastly underrated, whether it's college or the pros. For example, the Mavericks-Spurs series that ended last week came down to two things: 1.) the Spurs made shots and the Mavs didn't, and 2.) Gregg Popovich coached the pants off of Rick Carlisle. Pops pushed the right buttons all series long, whereas Carlisle sat idly and stubbornly and continually made the wrong choice or the right choice too late. Spurs win in 6. The coach matters, period.

One thing I really hate in the coaching world is the Snake: the college coach that can't be trusted. It doesn't matter so much to me with the pros, but in college, I want a trustworthy coach. It makes me furious to see the Kevin Sampsons of the world move from school to school, leaving a path of destruction in their wake, while the NCAA continues to look the other way and allow the junk to take place. John Calipari is, for my money, perhaps the worst of the worst. A good coach, sure, but a trustworthy guy? No. Both schools he's been at before Kentucky have been racked with scandals and as it always is with the NCAA, the schools were penalized, not the guy in charge. Judging by the talent he's pulled in each of the last two seasons, it's not much of a jump to assume some payments are being thrown around (especially considering Kentucky's past when it comes to these matters).

Now Coach Cal is using the Bulls opening as leverage to get a new contract. On some level I can't fault him for this. If there's money to be made, I guess you make it, morals aside. The broken system is the real problem. Calipari has been at Kentucky for one year. He assembled (again, probably with the aid of big cash payments) the most talented team in the country, fell flat in the tournament (losing in the Elite 8), and has five kids leaving early for the draft (four of whom were freshmen). He's bringing in another high level recruiting class this year but the results are likely to be the same. Eventually (and maybe sooner rather than later), Cal will leave Kentucky on the brink of NCAA probation to take his sleazy practices to the next highest bidder. This is almost a certainty. He'll assemble great talent, but he won't graduate any meaningful players and he will get the school in trouble. It's almost a one hundred percent probability. And yet, Kentucky needs to win so bad that they'll continue to pad the bed they've made with this guy and give him a raise he hasn't earned.

How much longer must the NCAA allow this crap to take place? How much longer do we have to watch a guy screw over not only the school and the program but the kids he talks into playing for him, only to leave them in limbo when he inevitably abandons ship? How much longer can the NCAA continue to come after kids, many of whom are coming from nothing, for taking a few hundred bucks from a booster while turning a blind eye to known cheaters? How much longer do we have to pretend that the big time athletes in the revenue sports are students rather than acknowledging their status as pros in the making? The NCAA is a laughing stock and the longer it allows snakes like John Calipari to run amok, the louder the laughter gets.