Calipari Doing Something Sleazy? Surely Not

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There’s an etiquette issue that occasionally crops up in the coaching world:

A coach leaves School A for School B, but he continues to call and recruit the kids he was luring to School A… to School B.

It’s considered bad etiquette.

You might remember a couple of months ago when Tennessee quarterbacks coach David Reaves got ripped by South Carolina fans and media for calling tailback target Jarvis Giles about Tennessee… after originally recruiting him to Carolina (where he wound up signing).

Well today there’s been an awful lot of talk of Memphis commitments signing with Kentucky now that Calipari appears to be headed to Lexington.

The same goes for Memphis signees who might ask out of the letters they’ve already signed with the Tigers.

In addition, some current Tiger players are expected to transfer to UK.

According to SI.com, “Memphis assistants are already touching base with recruits to make sure they’d jump to the SEC” with Calipari.

So, if it’s not kosher to try to lure kids from your old school to your new school, what is it if you raid the whole darn roster?

In a word, it’s sleazy. 

Much like Calipari’s reputation.



But there’s more.

I mentioned earlier today that asking a school for permission to talk to another school’s coach is a meaningless formality in these days of search firms and agents.

But ESPN is now reporting that UK didn’t go through Calipari’s agent.  They met with Calipari, supposedly, for three hours on Sunday. 

And then they finally got around to asking Memphis for permission to talk to Calipari late this morning.

First, if that’s true and I’m a Memphis administrator, I’m not real pleased that my multi-million dollar coach went behind my back to talk to another school.

Second, that’s a bit sleazy on the part of Mitch Barnhart and Kentucky if that report is accurate.

So maybe Calipari and Kentucky really are a good fit.