By Mike Conklin
This has been a lively off-season for journalists covering pro basketball and hockey in Chicago. Between Derrick Rose’s SAT test revelations and Patrick Kane’s taxicab adventures, there have been entertaining, better-than-average sideshows for local fans. They’ve been nicely inflamed by radio talk show hosts.
By far, Rose’s apparent role as an academically ineligible player at Memphis State University is the most significant development. Hockey players have been getting drunk and disorderly forever, but fallout from MSU having an ineligible player on its Final Four team is truly big stuff.
The penalty – the school vacating its Final Four season of two years ago – is as harsh as anything the NCAA dishes. It’s rare that it happens and the Tiger coach at the time, John Calipari, now has been in charge of two programs thusly penalized. Naturally, he has moved on to bigger and better things as the new Kentucky coach. That’s the way it works these days in college athletics.
While the Chicago media understandably focused on Rose, a Chicago native, the true significance of this story is not about a single player. After all, the National Basketball Association basically requires all rookies to spend a season-in-training in college. It is much more about cowardly university athletic administrators enabling ego-maniacal coaches.
In January of 2001, I wrote an opinion piece for the Chicago Tribune with the headline “Memphis rolls in dirt with sleazy Calipari, outlining how Memphis State University’s then-new coach, Calipari, was a metaphor for almost everything wrong about college basketball. I outlined how his strength was the weakness of university officials, who’ll do what it takes to gain success including hiring someone with a known, checkered background.
When this article appeared, I was bombarded with hate mail and telephone calls. No problem, it comes with the territory and I expected it. Secretly, I kind of relished it. One call was from Calipari, who wondered if he had insulted me – a person he did not know – at some point in my lengthy sports journalism career. Apparently it was beyond his understanding that my sentiments in the opinion piece could be anything but personal and not about principles.
My favorite protest came from Memphis State’s director of communication services, Curt Guenther, who emphasized in a letter to the editor that Calipari “demonstrated his commitment to academics” and “that the men’s basketball team members take their academic responsibilities seriously.” Guenther pointed out that the coach had donated money to the library, apparently overlooking how much of a pittance it was compared to his salary – and the nice tax deduction Calipari surely got.
The smart coaches put layers between them and wrongdoing, which means they are not directly implicated nor have direct knowledge – wink, wink – of what is taking place. Typically this comes in the form of toadies such as assistant coaches, boosters, or zealous relatives and friends of the athlete. This layering comes in very handy when it becomes finger-pointing time, a position Memphis State now finds itself.
Never mind that it occurs on the head coach’s watch and they are responsible for knowing every detail of the players in his program. This also was the case for Calipari before Memphis State at the University of Massachusetts, the other school that saw a splendid Final Four season go up in flames while he was there because of an ineligible player.
This system allows the slick coaches to slide untouched through the ranks as long as administrators are willing to hire them. It happens all the time and we saw this with Calipari getting a new, more lucrative, prestigious head coaching job at Kentucky. Maybe someday John could make the Wildcats his third program to vacate an NCAA Final Four appearance.
But the smart administrators who’ve been around for a while, like R.C. Johnson, the Memphis State athletic director who hired Calipari, know what takes place. They should be vigilant, both in the hiring of a coach and the monitoring of the program. How many times do you see the ADs go untouched in these scandals? Almost always, and maybe that is the real problem here.
Johnson, still on the job, acknowledged in a press conference that the Final Four banners of two seasons ago may have to come down, but said the memories will remain. Let’s hope everyone’s memory isn’t too selective.
Of course, it could’ve been worse. Memphis could have won the title game against Kansas it lost and now everyone involved would be in a bigger state of mourning.
Derrick Rose? He’s just a bit player.
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Mike Conklin, who spent 35 years at the Tribune, teaches journalism at DePaul University. Comments welcome.
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Previously by Mike Conklin:
* Webio Warnings Wasted
* Missing The Soccer Beat
* At Ring Lardner’s Table
* Behind That Beer Photo
Posted on August 22, 2009