Kentucky Wildcats 5 for Wednesday: Is Kentucky fighting back against the media castigation of John Calipari?
By Paul Jordan
It’s happening again. “It” is what I have coined “the media castigation of John Calipari”. Simply put, “it” is when those in the media with a bias against John Calipari use their medium as a personal trumpet to bash Calipari and air their grievances, whether real or imagined. These stories often have an air of authenticity but when you dig to the root of the story, you see it’s just plain rubbish.
Such is the case with CBSSports’s Gary Parrish who also tries to put a black cloud on a student athlete, Anthony Davis, which is even more despicable. Parrish’s latest hackjob “Fair or not, Kentucky freshman Davis must face ‘scandal’ “. No, I am not linking it and I really suggest that you don’t look for it. All these slimeballs want is your hits and they know that Kentucky fans are probably the single most largest source of Internet traffic, so don’t reward such behavior.
In the “article”, Parrish basically rehashes last year’s “scandal” in which the Chicago Sun Times printed a story in which they claimed Anthony Davis was offered $200,000 to attend UK. And in this article, Parrish admits that even if the story was true, the sources were “thin”. And in reality, this story was dead. No one in the national media gave it much credence at all. Parrish himself condemned the Chicago Sun-Times story a year ago initially, calling it “insane and embarassing” and “sloppy”.
Yet, nearly a year later, Parrish does the proverbial kicking of the hornet’s nest, attempting to get this whole mess stirred up again. stating:
Davis is now on campus at UK and preparing to help Calipari try to win his first national championship and — it should be noted — nothing new as it pertains to that Sun-Times story has been reported since last August. That’s probably a good sign for UK.
But it’ll be interesting to see as the season draws closer, then starts, then progresses, if Davis can successfully distance himself from the so-called scandal.
Why would Parrish, a respected national columnist engage in such low brow tactics against Kentucky, Calipari, and worse yet, a 18 year old kid?
Much like ESPN’s Pat Forde and his book writing partnership with Rick Pitino, Gary Parrish has an ulterior motive in his castigation of Calipari. Parrish is one half of “The Gary Parrish show with Geoff Calkins” airing on ESPN 92.9 and 680AM Sportsradio in … Memphis. We all know Geoff Calkins. If John Calipari were Batman, Calkins is the original Joker. Calkins has had the shelf life and tenacity of a Batman villian in his crusade on all things Calipari, dating back to Cal’s stay in Memphis. One of the very first posts on this site that I wrote was introducing Kentucky fans to “The original Miserable”.
Parrish has written good articles on Calipari before but in reality, it seems he is just masking his anti Calipari venom as he has never wavered at taking shots at Cal from his CBS post. More often than not, Parrish is the one making the “World Wide Wes” innuendos about Calipari and then trying to douse it with “nothing illegal has been linked” with Cal and WWW in the same article. Parrish is the one that shakes the hornets nest and Calkins is the one that gets them swarming mad in Memphis.
And I’m sure it’s great radio in Memphis, whose fans stalk Calipari like a scorned lover. Parrish uses his credentials as a CBS writer to act as an agent provocateur while other reporters follow his lead and continue the castigation of Calipari.
For their part, the Kentucky brass appears ready to play hardball when it comes to attacks on their student athletes. Senior Associate AD for Communications at Kentucky DeWayne Peevy fired out the above tweeter bombs in response to Parrish’s article.
Let’s not forget for a second that the true target of Parrish’s story is John Calipari. This is Parrish’s standard attack. And the fact that he dredges up old garbage on a student athlete to inflict collateral damage on John Calipari makes it even more despicable.
Moving on, the morning five is about more than Parrish today. Joker Phillips could make a very big splash in the 2012 recruiting wars as South Carolina DB Devontre Parnell will be making his decision. Rivals has Parnell listed as a **** CB and Parnell has been chased by the major programs. Reportedly, he is down to a final three of Kentucky, Louisville, and NC State.
Calipari continues on the recruiting trail, traveling from Georgia to Milwaukee, back to Georgia, and then to South Carolina. All for the purpose of letting these kids see his smiling mug in the stands at their AAU games. It’s an exhausting regimen, but apparently Calipari relishes this part of the job as well. It’s just part of the “grunt” work that Calipari has to put in to maintain his role as ace recruiter and it’s one that people who bash the amount of money he makes don’t consider. Being a college basketball coach is not all glitz and glamour. It’s also exhausting draining travel and being away from your family for weeks a a time.
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