Bledsoe story has the feeling of a personal attack on Calipari but seems to be a non issue

I know the news of the “Bledsoe investigation” is just a few hours old but already the castigation of John Calipari has begun on the internet. But from what I have heard, been told, and read, this is all starting to look like a non issue infraction wise for Kentucky, but it is looking more and more like an attempt to embarrass John Calipari.

I know I am going to be called a tremendous apologist for John Calipari for taking this stance, but several things seems kind of off with this article.

First and foremost, the timing of the story is a bit suspicious. I have found that there is usually a hidden agenda whenever a big story is released late on a holiday weekend. Most people are going to be absorbed by the holiday, so if an organization breaks the news, it is usually something that they hope most people won’t notice or pay a lot of attention to. Now if it is a slander piece, as I suspect, it gets the most legs releasing it late into the Holiday as university administrators, coaches, and the athletic staff have all left for the long weekend and there is really no way to get an official statement from UK until Monday, if not Tuesday. But the damage has already been done for Calipari and the speculation and rumor mongering will continue through the weekend.

The fact is that the Times had been working on this story for quite a while and have had several options to release it. If there was any real implication to the story, don’t you think it would have been released around tournament time to do maximum damage? Once again the fact this story has been rumored for a long time and released on a holiday weekend drains some of the credibility for me.

Secondly, from what I have heard, none of this concerns John Calipari. I have heard the Gillispie was recruiting Bledsoe about the time of these rent rumors. John Calipari was at Memphis when most of this was compiled, so if any of this is negative to Kentucky, it was on the Billy Clyde watch. But once again, the timing of the story is fishy.

And finally on the grades issue. From all indications, the NCAA spent a lot of time vetting the grades of Bledsoe and if you recall his eligibility at UK was an issue for quite some time. I have also been told that the NCAA Clearinghouse cleared Bledsoe for Duke as well, so you have quite a few organizations and schools looking at his grades and deciding that they were legitimate.

It is important to note that this does not appear to be a Derrick Rose issue as of right now. As we recall the testing agency threw out Rose’s ACT score and the NCAA got involved again. From the sound of this story, there is nothing new in this story that the NCAA did not know about beforehand. Everyone knew that Bledsoe was a risk grades-wise and it is not implausible that Bledsoe could have gotten his grades up on his own. No one is coming forward and claiming that they took an ACT test for Bledsoe like Rose, so it seems that the grades issue too, is a non issue.

Unfortunately this feels like a news reporter with a hard on for John Calipari who decided to try to get at Cal by trying to dig up dirt on Bledsoe. During the course of their investigation, they came across a jilted landlord who feels the Bledsoes owe them money and they decided to get on the Eric Bledsoe payout express and decided to come out and go public with it about a month before Bledsoe finally gets his big pay day. Another thing that bothers me about the story is that it seems terribly dated. There are no recent quotes or dates given and the story admits they do not know the scope of the investigation.

And Kentucky knows nothing about the investigation either. And the fact that Kentucky knows nothing about an investigation and some reporters do means it is probably more of a Bledsoe story if anything, yet Calipari’s name was thrown in for good measure. Or this could all be information on a year old investigation that the NCAA did on Bledsoe when the issue of his grades came up.

Unfortunately, the national media has run with this and the damage has been done to Calipari’s reputation once again. But once again, there seems to be no substance or merit to the story and it’s something that comes with having John Calapari as your head coach.

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