Personally, being a poor journalist, I don’t have an ESPN Insiders subscription, but the folks at Kentucky Sports Radio do — that lawyering must pay well — and have printed excerpts from Jay Bilas’ defense of John Calipari.
Here’s one excerpt from Bilas’ piece:
So far, the biggest target in this saga has been Calipari. Because we have this ridiculous notion that the head coach is responsible for everything that goes on in his program, Calipari is taking the blame even though his name is not even mentioned in the Notice of Allegations. Remember, the Notice mentioned the name of a representative of Memphis’ athletic interests over a single phone call. If the NCAA had anything on Calipari, it would have unloaded it in the Notice. It does not.
Here’s another:
Call me old-fashioned, but I require established facts and evidence before I call someone a cheater. I am not naive about the way things work in basketball, because I see it every day. But there is a difference between the problems with the culture in the game and making specific allegations of academic fraud against an individual. We all share the blame collectively for what is going on in the game, but we should require more evidence and hard facts before we indict any individual.
So far, the only “evidence” against Calipari is that he was the head coach, and the head coach is responsible for everything that happens on his watch, that he was the head coach at UMass when Marcus Camby accepted money from an agent and the head coach is responsible for everything that happens on his watch, and he’s at Memphis and he lets Worldwide Wes and the FedEx CEO hang around his program.
Whooaaa, that’s very “un-Jay Bilas” & “un-ESPN” like. Bilas usually says whatever makes DUKE or the ACC look better, and EPSN says whatever sells magazine, online subscriptions, and TV ratings which rarely works to UK’s favor much less falls to the side of common sense. I quess the SEC/ESPN deal might finally be showing some fruits.
Jay makes good sense in his comments. Others should take a lesson.
Mark Liptak
Just fyi, ESPN recently changed its insider policy, making ESPN Insider free for Magazine subscribers. It’s a great article, thanks for the link.
Great article. Thanks for the link. Just fyi, ESPN recently changed its insider policy, and now it’s free for Magazine subscribers, making it a much better deal.
Thanks for the article with Bilas’ thoughts. It’s nice to read an article out of the everyday UK loop that doesn’t bash or take cheap shots at Coach Cal. I too, believe in reporting the facts and spare me the innuendo. Some of your colleagues believe Cat fans only want to view things through the royal blue glass. There are some out there, for sure. But the great majority of us want unbiased, factual reporting without character assassination of Coach Cal. I think you are giving us that.
Bilas is not that naive, couldn’t be.
UKFAN#1-Not sure about your comments regarding Jay Bilas and any of his “anti-UK” comments. If anything, he’s one of the more supportive “talking heads” on ESPN towards UK, as opposed to Digger or Andy Katz. Jay has all but said that the UK job is one of the top jobs in the country, if not the TOP job.
He has expressed his admiration for UK, the facilities, the fan support, everything about UK’s program.
Sorry but your comments sound as if you feel Bilas has an agenda against UK.
Quite the opposite…he’s literaly pledged his undying support for UK, which is refreshing compared to all of the bashing UK has to endure from ESPN and some of their commentators.