Less than 13 months.
When Kentucky hired coach John Calipari in April 2009, skeptics rhetorically asked how long it would take controversy to follow him to Lexington. And now we have the answer.
The Lexington Herald-Leader discovered that of nine SEC teams that reported GPAs for their men’s basketball teams, Kentucky’s squad came in last with a 2.025 GPA for the fall semester. Collectively, that’s a solid C average for every player on the team.
Calipari and the Kentucky athletics department deserve an F.
It’s no secret that Calipari has been present during controversies at past jobs. The NCAA vacated both of his two trips to the Final Four because of ineligible players. In 1996, the NCAA discovered that Marcus Camby had received money from an agent, which compromised his status as an amateur player.
More recently, the NCAA found that a Memphis player — later revealed to be Derrick Rose — had someone else take his SATs in high school. Because of “knowing fraudulence or misconduct,” the NCAA decided that Rose was ineligible even though the fraud was discovered after Memphis’ run to the championship game against Kansas in 2008. In both cases, the NCAA did not peg the blame on Calipari.
Yes, this is America, and we cherish our justice system’s central tenet: People are innocent until proven guilty. But Kentucky athletic officials should know better.
With so much baggage accompanying Calipari to Lexington, it was important for Calipari and Kentucky to have a clean first year. Technically, he’s been on the job for more than a year. But his first academic year with the Wildcats won’t end until June 30. And thanks to some educationally disinterested players, Calipari will have to yet again answer questions about how he runs a program.
But Calipari shouldn’t have to field all of those questions. For a program as financially well endowed as Kentucky’s, it’s impossible to believe that the Wildcat players didn’t have plenty of resources at their disposal to help them with their studies. In addition, there should be at least one person who is responsible for monitoring the weekly and monthly academic progress of each player. More likely, Kentucky has a team of staff members in charge of monitoring academics that is large enough to double as a scout squad at practice.
With tutors, academic advisers and regulators, Kentucky has no excuse for allowing student-athletes to slip into such mediocrity. Calipari delivered a bounty of talented freshmen, many of whom clearly are destined to play in the NBA by fall 2010. That makes it especially shameful that Kentucky’s academic team didn’t keep a watchful eye on the players’ progress.
Not to diminish personal accountability, the players who earned a bunch of C’s and D’s should be embarrassed by their academic indifference. But imagine being an 18- or 19-year-old who constantly hears that he’ll be a millionaire in less than a year. That makes studying for a boring subject’s exam a lot less enticing. College students with far less affluent futures often struggle with their academic discipline when they arrive on campus.
The difference is that most students don’t have the extensive support network that student-athletes have, especially men’s basketball players at Kentucky.
This incident won’t be the downfall of Calipari at Kentucky. But it is an early opportunity for the coach to set the tone for his tenure with the Wildcats.
