Lexington Herald Leader Questions UK on John Calipari's "High-Risk Hire". Read Editorial.
UK takes gamble on high-risk hire
The cable broadcast pooh-bahs who slobber over college basketball coaches like teen-age boys over the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue are all into the hosannas about the University of Kentucky hiring University of Memphis coach John Calipari to succeed Billy Gillispie.
Excuse us if we're not breaking out the blue-and-white face paint and pom-pons.
UK could've done better. And certainly could've gotten someone without a reputation as a shady recruiter and overseer of programs at Memphis and the University of Massachusetts whose athletes have had nasty brushes with the law and/or NCAA regulations.
This is the University of Kentucky, after all, where President Lee T. Todd Jr. has made a big deal of breaking the cycle of NCAA penalties every decade since the 1950s.
There were jokes flying around on Tuesday about renaming "The Erupption Zone," the student section behind one of the baskets.
Somebody suggested "The Calzone." Clever.
Another suggested "The C Section." How nice.
Todd, Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart and the Big Blue Nation, Big Blue Planet — whatever you want to call the rabid fan base — darn well better hope it doesn't become "The Corruption Zone."
If it does, we could be talking Death Penalty City, bay-bee.
That would be a truly unfortunate legacy for a well-meaning president who came into office committed to cleaning up the win-at-all-costs atmosphere around UK basketball that led to a Pulitzer Prize for this newspaper and spawned the infamous "Kentucky's Shame" cover of Sports Illustrated.
To be fair, Calipari has never been implicated personally in NCAA violations. However, his players' graduation record has been lower than UK's.
The Courier-Journal reported Tuesday that the latest NCAA statistics show Memphis in the 40-50 percentile in Division I men's basketball from 2003-2007. UK ranked in the 60-70 percentile over that time.
At his press conference Wednesday, Calipari said the graduation rate at Memphis before he got there was zero, but 19 of his last 22 seniors will have graduated by this May.
Make no mistake: this is a big-stakes gamble for Todd and Barnhart, and we're not even talking about the $31.65 million deal for a basketball coach at a university that has to continually go begging to the legislature for funding, has raisied tuition, left professorships unfilled and frozen the pay of faculty and staff.
As Herald-Leader sports columnist John Clay noted yesterday, it's potentially high reward, sure — Calipari is a proven winner.
But it's also very, very high risk.
We find it somewhere on the ironic-to-bizarre scale that the instant T-shirt marking Calipari's hiring bears this legend:
"Envy Our Past. Fear Our Future."
Indeed.
Here's hoping Coach Cal proves our fears unfounded.
The cable broadcast pooh-bahs who slobber over college basketball coaches like teen-age boys over the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue are all into the hosannas about the University of Kentucky hiring University of Memphis coach John Calipari to succeed Billy Gillispie.
Excuse us if we're not breaking out the blue-and-white face paint and pom-pons.
UK could've done better. And certainly could've gotten someone without a reputation as a shady recruiter and overseer of programs at Memphis and the University of Massachusetts whose athletes have had nasty brushes with the law and/or NCAA regulations.
This is the University of Kentucky, after all, where President Lee T. Todd Jr. has made a big deal of breaking the cycle of NCAA penalties every decade since the 1950s.
There were jokes flying around on Tuesday about renaming "The Erupption Zone," the student section behind one of the baskets.
Somebody suggested "The Calzone." Clever.
Another suggested "The C Section." How nice.
Todd, Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart and the Big Blue Nation, Big Blue Planet — whatever you want to call the rabid fan base — darn well better hope it doesn't become "The Corruption Zone."
If it does, we could be talking Death Penalty City, bay-bee.
That would be a truly unfortunate legacy for a well-meaning president who came into office committed to cleaning up the win-at-all-costs atmosphere around UK basketball that led to a Pulitzer Prize for this newspaper and spawned the infamous "Kentucky's Shame" cover of Sports Illustrated.
To be fair, Calipari has never been implicated personally in NCAA violations. However, his players' graduation record has been lower than UK's.
The Courier-Journal reported Tuesday that the latest NCAA statistics show Memphis in the 40-50 percentile in Division I men's basketball from 2003-2007. UK ranked in the 60-70 percentile over that time.
At his press conference Wednesday, Calipari said the graduation rate at Memphis before he got there was zero, but 19 of his last 22 seniors will have graduated by this May.
Make no mistake: this is a big-stakes gamble for Todd and Barnhart, and we're not even talking about the $31.65 million deal for a basketball coach at a university that has to continually go begging to the legislature for funding, has raisied tuition, left professorships unfilled and frozen the pay of faculty and staff.
As Herald-Leader sports columnist John Clay noted yesterday, it's potentially high reward, sure — Calipari is a proven winner.
But it's also very, very high risk.
We find it somewhere on the ironic-to-bizarre scale that the instant T-shirt marking Calipari's hiring bears this legend:
"Envy Our Past. Fear Our Future."
Indeed.
Here's hoping Coach Cal proves our fears unfounded.
Labels: College sports
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 8:51 AM
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