Sigh.
If you think Tiger Woods is having a tough time from his ex-dalliances, you clearly have not met John Calipari’s bitter ex’s. If you thought that Lindsey Lohan and Samantha Ronson had knock down, drag them out breakups, you never witnessed the drama from John Calipari’s exes. If you thought that lady that kept breaking into David Letterman’s house was wacky, well that does not even touch the level of wackiness from John Calipari’s exes. And if you thought that guy who swam naked across Biscayne Bay to reach Anna Kournikova and ended up on the wrong boat deck screaming “Anna, save me!” was nuts ….. well you have not even met these two.
Yes, our favorite Memphis “miserables”, Geoffrey Calkin and Dan Wolken are back at their stalkerish obsession of Calipari yet again, this time taking their cue from the ravings of lunatic fringe leader Bobby Knight. I still don’t know what is the most disturbing aspect of this: the fact that Knight, as a highly paid ESPN analyst still does not know the correct name of the Memphis school or that Calkin and Wolken roll over and drink the Bobby Knight kool-aid, barely objecting to the fact that he is the only person that still calles them Memphis State?
Calkin lets his irresponsible raving fly in print, bordering once again dangerously close to libelous territory. Despite the fact that Calipari has never been named, Calkins has created this whole dream world in the recesses of his mind where his conspiracy theories are fact and he treats them that way:
Calipari’s defenders will say he was never personally implicated. This is also true. But you don’t have to be the winningest coach in college basketball history to realize that Calipari knew how Derrick Rose passed his SAT.
Looking through Calkin’s past articles, I don’t see any that speak glowingly of Bobby Knight or that hold him as a bastion of integrity, yet now Calkins drools at his feet and accepts his words at the Bible. I wonder if Calkins has subscribed to the whole Bible of Bobby which includes such gems as “Assault thy neighbor” or “Thou shalt enjoy rape if it occurs“. Of course, looking at Calkin’s past articles, you saw very few critical of Calipari while he was at Memphis, but the floodgate open when after a decade on the job, Calipari pursued his dream job.
Now Calkins wallows in the muck like a present day Gollum and follows the rantings of a burned out coach who let the game pass him by to get over the loss of Calipari. I can see Calkins in the Fed Ex Forum locker room late at night caressing a picture of Calipari and murmuring “My precious”.
For his credit, at least Calkins has the stones to put his attacks in print. His co-hort, Dan Wolken is like a timid mouse who hides behind his twitter and puts out his attacks electronically. If Calkins is the master of the shrill attack piece in print, Wolken is the accompanying sucker punch. His twitter account is filled with jealous jabs at Calipari. And of course, he has been turning them out lately:
Debating Cal’s past is useless. The real story is how an elite program fell so hard, it had to buy Memphis’ recruiting class to recover
Typical Wolken trollness. “Kentucky bought Memphis’s recruiting class” is the shrill mantra of Calkins, Wolken, and all their drama queen readers. The fact is that only Cousins and Dodson followed Calipari from Memphis and at last check of today’s boxscore, those two players only played 38 minutes of UK’s 200 minutes against Austin Peay and scored 24 of UK’s 90 points. So apparently, UK has 11 other players that did not follow Cal from Memphis. But Wolken is of the revisionist history that Bledsoe and Wall would have gone to Memphis also. Silly rabbit.
It should also be noted that Wolken uses his twitter skills to stalk ESPN personalities about some ill conceived notion of his that Memphis State is headed to the Big East. His recent twitter page shows him bugging Andy Katz about his Big East dream. Of course, I can’t wait to see the next Wolken twitter where he castigates Calipari for scheduling Atlantic 10 powerhouse UMass who dumped the Tigers Saturday night. It should be noted that everything wrong in Memphis is Calipari related.
Bottom line is this. If John Calipar was so bad for the University of Memphis, let’s go ahead and vacate the whole Calipari era then. Let’s vacate all the 253 wins Calipari racked up for the Tigers and lets storm the Fed Ex Forum and burn that to the ground as well. Surely Calipari had a hand in getting that built. While we are at it, let’s free all the Memphis players on the current roster that Calipari signed and free them as well and wipe all their contributions from the record book as well as that nice big CUSA winning streak you have. Let’s also get rid of your wunderkid coach Pastner, who cut his teeth at the evil Calipari’s feet. Surely he must be cursed as well. He has also accepted a recruiting package deal of the Barton Brothers. And then let’s see Memphis try to make it out of the Conference of Unwanted Schools in America without Calipari’s contributions to your program and getting you to where you are at this point.
Ungrateful bastards.
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