A note about this morning’s column, and the vacated club

 Send This Story To A Friend

Content provided by John Clay’s Sidelines.

I’ve received a couple of responses to this morning’s column about the Derrick Rose/John Calipari situation saying that I still managed to put a negative spin on the UK coach by writing, “There may come a day when John Calipari’s detractors will finally catch the coach red-handed at something other than guilt by association.”

(That was an attempt at sarcasm, by the way.)

And, “And yes, I’m cynical enough to think there may well be an instance when the national media can crow its I-told-you-so’s about Calipari.”

(I do possess a cynical streak.)

Anyway, here’s why I wrote those two lines:

I don’t know that John Calipari is a dirty coach.

I don’t know that John Calipari is an impeccably clean coach.

I do know that I have been around college sports long enough to know that often the ones you think are clean could well be dirty, and the ones you are sure are dirty are not that, at all. I am jaded(?) enough not to assume anything about a coach or a program. If you think you absolutely know one way or another, you’re fooling yourself. It’s the same with athletes. I know the ones I think are good guys. But I am sometimes surprised to find out later that person was not the person I thought he or she was. Our access is limited more all the time. It’s a mistake to think that we know what any of these people are really like.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m old enough not to deal in asbolutes much anymore. I do think in this case, given the facts presented in the letter, this is largely a case related to Chicago, and the corruption that goes on in Chicago high school basketball. Remember, Derrick Rose isn’t the only player involved. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported, as many as four student-athletes at his school allegedly had their grades fixed. The player who the NCAA thinks allegedly took Rose’s test for him, is in jail.

And I do think there are those in the so-called national media — a term I hate by the way — who have written things without ever bothering to read the actual “notice of allegations” served by the NCAA to Memphis.

Also, I caught a bit of Larry Glover’s call-in show on WVLK, and heard a caller pose an interesting trivia question:

What do Jim Calhoun, Lute Olsen, Norm Stewart and Gene Keady have in common?

They all had NCAA Tournament appearances vacated.

You can add Larry Brown, Steve Lavin, Joey Meyer, Wimp Sanderson, Steve Fisher, Jim O’Brien and Bill Frieder, among others, to that list, as well.

In fact, in 1996, the year that UMass’ NCAA Final Four appearance was vacated, so was the appearance that year of five other schools in the tournament — California, Connecticut, Michigan, Purdue and Texas Tech.