BleedGopher
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2008
- Messages
- 62,795
- Reaction score
- 20,218
- Points
- 113
I would not count on Calipari's stuff catching up to him in Lexington. For the excrement to fly on a big time sports program, there needs to be a lot of media cooperation to make it happen. When the media is strong, the likelihood in Kentucky is they would turn their heads away from Worldwide Wes, skipping class, and new cars. In the downsizing of the print world in particular, this is even less likely. Without the Pioneer Press, Clem might still be the coach here.
I remember one academic person commenting on the Gopher scandal who said the difference between the Kentucky media and fanbase and ours is that we really cared about the academic issues and scandal, and they wouldn't. Perhaps Kentucky and Slick Cal are a perfect match.
I understand people's views. Kentucky has been caught cheating in the past and paid for it in a very public way. But these types of things happen at every program in the country. WWW steered players to UofL in the 80's. He's close to a number of coaches like Jim Boheim and others. It only seems that UK is the one to pay the price for past transgressions.
Roy Williams has more NCAA violations than Calipari (who has ZER0...the NCAA gave him and WWW a clean bill of health. That was one of the holdups with Dr. Todd.), Rick Pitino had to be disassociated from the University of Hawaii for multiple infractions during the 70's.
Like Jason Whitlock pointed out in an article: If you have problems take them up with the NCAA. UK has an outstanding academic support system for athletes. The C.A.T.S. Program is mandatory for all student-athletes.
Your post makes it seem as though you're missing the point. I've seen nobody claim that there are currently bad things going at UK. While I'm not so sure about BG, I'd be willing to bet that immediately before him, everything was run quite cleanly. And frankly, when it comes to past transgressions, gopher fans can't be throwing stones. We've got plenty of our own, for which we paid quite dearly. The only point about past transgressions is that UK, like the gophers, is likely to be watched a little more closely than some other schools.
And we all know that Cal has no recorded NCAA offenses. But as Forde says, he walks right up to the line between gray and unallowable. It's sort of like walking on the curb. You can do it most of the time, but when you're tired or preoocupied, you slip. THe NCAA cannot say anything about a coach other than the actually recorded offenses. TO say anything beyond that would create huge lawsuit potential, and they're smarter than that. So of course Barnhart can say that he talked to the NCAA and they gave him a clean bill of health. They couldn't say anything else. But you can bet that internally, the NCAA is very aware of how close Cal has come to trouble, and what a fine line he's walking. And the betting here is that if Cal does slip off that curb, the NCAA is very likely to notice.