John Calipari And Dale Brown, Two Sides Of The Same Coin

I know there are a lot of people out there who are going to wince and look up real fast to see if the sky is falling when I make the statement that I am about to make, but it needs to be said. I am more convinced now than ever that John Calipari is the best of the best when it comes to doing things the right way. After the Tennessee game I asked the question on another fan site, “Does Tennessee Deserve The Death Penalty?” The answers to that question were many and varied, but they all made me realize that in spite of what some foul-mouthed, insolent, boorish types who claimed that John Calipari was bringing the NCAA’s wrath in his plane from Memphis, Coach Calipari is making things work at UK the way they should be done. He never ceases to work hard for what he wants and thinks the school and his players need. And he has worked hand in hand with the NCAA the whole way.

When Dale Brown was coaching at LSU, he broke the rules more than once. He gave money to players, met illegally with recruits, and generally thumbed his nose at the NCAA. But the things he did, he did for the right reasons. Not to gain a competitive advantage, but to maintain his program and his kids. Now some of you are going to call this a moral dilemma, but I don’t. If the NCAA spent more time worrying about what the kids and the programs need, instead of worrying about what a kid is doing working at a basketball camp, the collegiate game would be a lot better off. But in Brown’s day, a coach had to sneak around to do things that should be second nature to a coach who cares about his players. A story was told about Brown giving three players $300 each to go visit a teammate who was dying of cancer in another state. A huge NCAA violation which could have cost him his job, but the right thing to do. He was more worried about taking care of those players than the NCAA.

John Calipari tried to get Enes Kanter into college, because it was the right thing to do. He tried to work with the NCAA to make it happen and it didn’t, but he did what he should have. He could have put an elaborate scheme into place and gotten his first NCAA Championship and hung banner number 8 in Rupp, but he chose the right thing to do. And sometimes those choices have consequences. John Calipari doing the right thing is going to cost UK it’s eighth national championship, that is fairly plain to see now. And if John Calipari does the right thing enough times, and it costs UK enough championships, is it going to cost him his job? Probably, but again, it is the right thing to do.

I met Dale Brown a few weeks ago when the Cats played LSU at Rupp. That meeting made me do my homework and that gave me a better understanding of the man and his thought processes, and even more importantly his heart, because I knew inside that the man I met was not the evil being I thought him to be after watching him be a pain the the sides of UK for so long. I have watched John Calipari for over a year now, and studied his methods, and his ways of motivation for his players and even himself. Those things tell me that John Calipari is about so much more than what his critics claim, and that any man who goes out of his way to do what he does is much more than just a coach. Dale Brown was more than just a coach at LSU, and he put his job on the line more than once to make sure his players knew what kind of a man he was. John Calipari does the same thing. Dale Brown had to break the rules to take care of the people he cared about, and he was right in doing it. John Calipari works hard to keep from breaking the rules for the same reason. Two sides of the same coin indeed. There are good guys in coaching, and there are bad guys in coaching. The line blurs more and more everyday. Some choose to do things right to take care of those they care about, and some choose to say, “Hey, if you want to come after someone, come get me, here I am”. Both are right, and I would be proud to call either one my coach. What I cannot stomach are those who exploit everything and everyone around them to gain that advantage they think they need. Those are the ones who need to be removed from the equation, because right and wrong mean nothing to them. And they don’t do it to help anyone else, they do it for themselves, and those people don’t deserve to be called a coach.

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