🏈 Good interview with John Calipari. His thoughts on the NCAA are interesting, to say the least.

[TerryP]

A couple of excerpts from the SN interview.

SN: Something people use against you a lot are the vacated Final Fours. One thing we wondered, how do the players who were on those teams feel about that designation?

CALIPARI: I wouldn’t be surprised if the Memphis kids come back and sue the NCAA. Those guys are saying, “We earned those wins. ... None of us knew anything about anything, Coach. That’s wrong. Why are they punishing me and the number of wins I had?” Like, Antonio Anderson and Robert Dozier had the most wins of anyone over a four-year period, but they take away 38.


They’re not going to be around long. The NCAA will not. Before I retire from coaching, they will no longer oversee college athletics. They will, but it won’t be the four power conferences—they’ll be on their own. And the main thing is, do you really care about these kids? They’ll get mad that I say it. The NCAA Tournament, for example. It’s more about the selection committee getting on TV, everybody getting their tickets on the aisle, down low, all the parties they go to, the traveling. But we don’t take the parents of the participants. But they take their kids and their families.


The officials will get better hotels than some of their teams. And I know it for a fact. The decisions they make on the $2,000 (expense allowance for student-athletes)—it should have been $4,000. It’s a stipend. It’s not salary. It’s not “pay-for-play.” It’s a stipend. It’s expenses. And then schools vote against it. All this stuff piles up to where people are going to say, “Enough’s enough.”

Does a team have to have NBA caliber players to win the "Big Dance?"

SN: This is one of those unlikely scenarios, both in real life and the nature of how you’ve run the program. But what if you won a championship with seven guys who weren’t NBA prospects? It’s never really happened, but ...


CALIPARI: It will never happen. You’re kidding yourself. For anybody to act like they’re going to coach ’em up, take second-level players and compete for national titles—dude is a liar. You have to have two or three NBA players on your team to win a national title.

 

[planomateo]

Sent that article to a couple of guys at work yesterday. Whenever you mention his name, one of the guys I sent it to pipes up with a "dirty coach" comment every single time. Tiresome to hear...

 

[bamafan4ever]

Calipari has a set to actually speak out on this issue. Good for him.

 

[psychojoe]

It is just the reason that I don't want the NCAA to be involved in any way with a D-1 football playoff. The CFA, a few years back, was the big schools reaction to the 1 school one vote philosophy that ruled the NCAA. The BCS emerged from that.

Cal is definitely right about the issue of whether you need NBA prospect caliber players to win the D-1 hoops championship. Even Butler had some big time talent that fuelled its runs the last two years. I am convinced that he engaged in some eligibility flim flam at Memphis and at Ky, (or at least knew it was going on), but he is right that the wrong people are being punished.