No, John Calipari has never been investigated by the FBI to my knowledge, but he has had wins vacated at UMASS and Memphis. We have this urban legend floating around about someone taking the SAT for Derrick Rose, and we know that Calipari openly tells players that he is not bringing them to college to go to college. He has had his whole starting lineup drafted before, but he is not some white knight who is above doing off-kilter things to recruit kids. Calipari needs to stop talking, and he needs to realize that he is just as much of a problem as Chuck Person.
Silent acceptance
John Calipari has silently accepted that people do things like this, and he has merely come out to say that he wants to prepare his players to go to the NBA. That is really difficult for us to reconcile because Calipari is not doing anything in the shadows. There are a lot of people who think that Calipari is an oily and slimy used car salesman, and they would be right. The problem is that Calipari is just as much to blame as Chuck Person for the problems that the NCAA has. The kid who is the "class clown" is just as disruptive as the kid who gets into fights. It is a difference of appearance. The class clown looks better. Calipari looks better. He is not a savior. He is simply better and milking the system.
The design of the system
The kids who play in the NCAA are getting used for cash. They are getting an education that costs a small percentage of what they earn for their schools, and their coaches have generational wealth as a result. Even the cleanest coach in the country is benefiting a lot from their players, and that is why the players get sucked into this system.
The coaches want to make more money, and the players want to get to the NBA. The system cannot be fixed because no one wants to. So as much as Calipari wants to say that this FBI investigation is bad for the sport, he needs to openly admit that he is a very rich man because of the system that invites an FBI investigation. So while Calipari is telling us all that he is some sort of clean machine who does things the right way, he is just as dirty as everyone else.
He just wiped the dirt on his jeans where we could not see it.
The NCAA has to change
The very first thing that they need to do is stop paying coaches so much money. They know that the government is watching them, and they would have to abide by the rules. These guys need to be forced to stop abusing the trust of their players to become millionaires.
