Coach Calipari's history of dirty deeds

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The N.C.A.A. found years ago that Calipari’s star player, Marcus Camby, had accepted large sums of cash and services, not the least the ministrations of a prostitute, from a couple of scalawag agents. The N.C.A.A. fined the university $151,000 and forced the Minutemen to vacate postseason victories and the Final Four appearance. Calipari at the time pronounced himself shocked and horrified — the N.C.A.A. held him guiltless — and immediately signed a $15 million contract to coach the Nets, a vagabond franchise then in New Jersey.

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Calipari, a voluble Chevy salesman of a recruiter, later moved to Memphis, which ended up vacating a lode of victories because of violations of N.C.A.A. rules, all of which Calipari said shocked him. Then he decamped to Kentucky.

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The Boston Globe, in a fine series in the mid-1990s, found that UMass’s most prominent stars, including Camby, were on academic probation, a fact not shared with the general public. Calipari battled to ensure that his sports department, rather than the university’s academic arm, maintained control of player academics.

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Eventually, the lead tutor, Steve Satell, raised a ruckus about corners cut and papers manufactured for academically troubled athletes. He said he had taken his case to university officials. “Coach Calipari could have created a great academic program, but he ruined it,” Satell told me. “And the university was absolutely complicit.”

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Coach Calipari has proved admirably consistent. At Memphis, he reeled in Derrick Rose, a wondrously talented point guard. Rose, it turned out, passed his SAT because someone else took the test for him. The N.C.A.A. stripped Memphis of a season’s worth of wins. Rose left for the N.B.A., where he should have been allowed to go all along. Calipari said these allegations hit him with the force of revelation. The N.C.A.A., again, held him guiltless.

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