I opened the Washington Post this morning to find that John Feinstein has chosen to write another article bashing John Calipari. Apparently, Calipari is the”everything wrong with college basketball” because he uses a rule that other people enacted better than everyone else in the game. Apparently, it is wrong for Coach Calipari to recruit the best high school players and help them achieve their dream of playing in the NBA. I guess he would prefer Coach Cal to be like Syracuse coach Jim Boheim who recently made negative comments about one of his own players to try to taint his draft status because he wouldn’t come back and help Boheim win more games. Perhaps he should pattern his program after a small school like Cal Poly. Surely, they care more about student athletes? Right? Wrong. Cal Poly had a graduation rate of 62% among it’s players. UK? 82% and rising. Maybe he should be like Feinstein’s very good friend Gary Williams. He’s a hall of fame coach. He must have been doing it the right way. Right? Wrong. Maryland had a 0 percent graduation rate for players entering school from 1997 to 2000, a period in which the school was building two Final Four teams. Think we ever heard from Feinstein about that? Nope.
All of those players at UK who aren’t real students have a B average. They go to class and take it seriously until such time someone offers them millions of dollars to quit. Want kids to stay in school? Stop offering the millions so early. A coach at any level before the professional level should see their job as preparing the kids for their next step in life. In college that should be either the NBA or graduation or in some cases both. For the most part, Calipari does exactly that. Many other schools don’t send kids to the NBA and also don’t graduate them. What exactly are those coaches doing? Looking out for themselves and no one else. If I had a kid who had the choice, I would send him to Calipari in a heartbeat.
People tend to hate success and successful people. Calipari is one of the best coaches coaching at the best college basketball program. People want to tear that down to feel better about themselves.
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