Deal With The Devil

Since we talked about God yesterday, I figured we'd bring it over to the Devil today, to make sure no one was left out. Today my beef is with University of Kentucky Men's Basketball Head Coach John Calipari, the Devil of College Basketball.

Calipari is one of the best coaches in college basketball today. He's a fixer-upper. He's taken every college team he has coached from the UMass Minutemen, to the Memphis Tigers, and finally the Kentucky Wildcats from obscurity to the limelight.

Calipari brought UMass out of a 30 year NCAA tournament drought in 1992, and every year thereafter under Calipari the Minutemen made the tournament, making it all the way to the Final Four in 1996.

After a Final Four appearance with UMass, Calipari had a bad stint in the NBA in which he was fired during his third season as coach of the New Jersey Nets. He returned to the college basketball scene in 2000 with the Memphis Tigers, a team that hadn't seen success since the early 90s. By 2003 he had turned the team into a consistent winner, bringing the Tigers to the NCAA tournament every year but 2005. Finally in 2008, Calipari came closer to a title than he has ever been finishing as a runner-up to Kansas.

Following the 2009 season at Memphis, Calipari took the job offer of a lifetime as head coach of the storied University of Kentucky basketball team. Using his famous one-and-done method, in which he brings in a great crop of freshmen that will all almost certainly leave after their first year, Calipari made Kentucky into a championship contender, but the team fell short, losing in the Elite Eight.

Not too shabby of a track record for a coach who only takes over struggling teams. But, all of this winning comes at a cost. And this is where theses schools make their deal with the devil, selling him their souls for fame and success.

You see, Calipari has a trick to his constant victory. It's called violating NCAA rules. The funny thing is, Calipari always gets out of whatever program he's coaching right around the time when controversy hits. In 1996, UMass had to vacate their tournament record, which included a Final Four appearance, after it was found by the NCAA, that the team's star, Marcus Camby had accepted money and gifts from an agent. Guess who went to the NBA the next year? John Calipari.

The controversy continued when Calipari went to Memphis. The first controversy came when Calipari gave jobs in the program to the relatives of recruits. In 2001 he successfully recruited the best high school player in the country, Dajuan Wagner, most likely under the condition that he give a job to his father Milt Wagner, which Calipari did soon after. In 2007 a similar situation arose; after successfully recruiting Tyreke Evans in 2007, Calipari made Evan's personal strength coach an administrative assistant.

But the problems didn't stop there. An NCAA investigation in 2008 showed, that Memphis' star player, Derrick Rose, who had led them all the way to the NCAA championship the year before, had someone else take his SATs for him, in order to meet NCAA qualifications. Rose, who had taken the ACT three times in Chicago, and never met NCAA standards for a scholarship on any of them, went to Detroit to take the SAT, where someone else finally met the qualifications for Rose.

But with Calipari, if you make a NCAA championship, you better expect some more controversy. It was also found, that during Rose's year at Memphis, Rose's brother was allowed to travel with the team for free. Just the SAT violation did the trick for the NCAA though, as Memphis was forced to vacate its entire 2007-08 regular season, and NCAA tournament wins; the other violation, which would have led to the same punishment, was just salt on the wound. Guess who was out of Memphis following the 2008-09 season? John Calipari.

And that's where we find ourselves today. The devil's done his dirty deeds again, this time in the form of GPA fraudulence. This past week, former University of Kentucky guard Eric Bledsoe was put under investigation as to whether he was eligible to play this year for the Wildcats, due to his low high school GPA.

According to a New York Times report, Bledsoe had a 1.9 GPA the first three years of his high school and in order to meet the standards set by the NCAA to receive a scholarship, Bledsoe would have needed just below a 2.5 GPA his senior year to meet, a pretty lofty grade increase.

Bledsoe also may have received rent from his high school basketball coach, Maurice Ford, his senior year. After the high school that Bledsoe had attended for the three previous years, Carol W. Hayes High School was shut down, instead of moving to nearby Woodlawn like most of his friends, Bledsoe and his mother moved to Birmingham in order to play for A.H. Parker High School. Now Bledsoe is under investigation for suspicion that his high school coach paid at least $1,200 or three month's rent for the Bledsoes, violating NCAA rules.

Calipari's been caught again, and he is seemingly getting worse at playing the game of deception, as this time the controversy comes only one year after coming to Kentucky. Maybe he thought all he needed was one year, figuring with such an all-star squad that he could win the championship quickly and get out, like he always does.

But the NCAA, the God of college basketball, always catches the devious Devil. Wherever Calipari goes to try and do his works, the NCAA is there shortly thereafter. I'm sure with the investigation pending, Calipari is desperately searching for a vacant NBA job.

Oh, but how sweet karma is. Calipari is seemingly under a spell himself. He can't win a title. He wins so many games every single season, rebuilding teams from no-names into contenders, but no matter what he does, no matter what tricks he pulls, it seems as if Calipari will always fall just a little short of winning it all.

The devil of college basketball is 51 years old, and he's getting worse and worse at his little games of deception. The NCAA is constantly on his tail, and Calipari can't keep jumping from school to school much longer, he can't continue to deceive people before they find out what he's doing first, he can't keep making runs at that long awaited title he's been chasing for 22 years as a head coach in both the NCAA and NBA for too much longer. But for now, maybe the devil will continue to make his deals, fooling people until he no longer can, seeking that title. But even if he does win it all, the NCAA will quickly be there uncovering some kind of trick, and Calipari will keep running and running from team to team to no avail, until he can't run anymore.