Monday, August 24, 2009
There are a couple of things the recently unearthed crimes of the Memphis Tigers bring to light.
First, former Memphis coach John Calipari is obviously a brilliant coach and an even better recruiter, but his moral compass is leading him in the wrong direction. It’s time to see some sort of action taken against him.
Second, it emphasizes that the NCAA’s current one-and-done policy for basketball is a joke. I have a hard time finding any redeeming qualities in forcing a player to attend school for one year. It’s crazy.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Tigers will be forced to vacate all their record 38 victories from the 2007-2008 season, in which they advanced to the national championship game, only to fall to a certain team from the Midwest. The NCAA levied this punishment after it was revealed that a player — later discovered to be Memphis point guard Derrick Rose — falsified an SAT score in order to qualify for school.
So, back to the revelations. Calipari is, like I said earlier, a brilliant coach. No one gets to two Final Fours with two different mid-majors without being excellent at what he does. But, if we’re being technical, he’s never been to a Final Four. He was stripped of both of his appearances because of NCAA rules violations.
The crazy part is, though, that Calipari hasn’t seen any punishment directed his way. When justice came down at Massachusetts, where his first Final Four was stripped because star center Marcus Camby had improper dealings with an agent, Calipari escaped to Memphis and saw no repercussions.
Now, he’s escaped Memphis and will see no action taken against him at his new job at Kentucky. Admittedly, there is no precedent of a coach being punished instead of the school, but in this instance there is a recurring problem, and no one has stepped up to the table to do anything about it. I say suspend Calipari. Kick him out of college basketball for an entire year. Twice he has been a part of something so wrong and immoral that a team of 13 kids that busted their butts for an entire season now have nothing in the record books to show for it. The punishment, for once, would fit the crime.
On the other hand, there’s Derrick Rose. Rose, though he did cheat and deserves some sort of penalty, was more a victim of the ridiculous rule that forces basketball players to come to school for one year. He never wanted to be a student. He could’ve left high school for the NBA and been the same level of star that he was last year when he was named the NBA’s rookie of the year. Some guys just have it. Besides that, what does one year of school even do?
I say they should do it like baseball. In baseball, players are allowed to go to the pros straight out of high school. Because so many prospects never see the major leagues, teams will often pay for the college education of their high school draft picks. This is why Kansas basketball guard C.J. Henry is not a scholarship athlete — the New York Yankees are picking up the tab.
If a baseball player does decide to go to college, however, they must go for three years — long enough to get an actual education.
Monday YouTube Sesh
It takes quite a bit for a guy riding a bike to impress me. Even trials riders — a.k.a. the guys that do the fancy tricks — don’t really blow me away.
Usually.
But check out what Danny MacAskill, a trials rider from Dunvegan, Scotland, can do on a bike. It defies gravity, physics and logic. It just shouldn’t be possible. You’ll see what I mean when he rides across the top of a wrought-iron fence at the start of the clip. Then it gets cooler.
Type “Danny MacAskill Inspired” into your YouTube search and prepare to have your jaw dropped.
— — Edited by Nick Gerik
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