Bobby Knight becomes what he despises — a NCAA rule breaker

For the past few years, Bobby Knight has made himself the standard for all that is right in college basketball and used his self imposed throne to denounce other coaches that he has perceived as “dirty”.  Instead of coming off as an elder statesman protecting the integrity of the game, he has come off as a SENILE, crazy old man as he has targeted Kentucky coach John Calipari and gained the wrath of the Big Blue Nation for his tangents on Calipari.

Today, the General has another item to put on his resume — that of a NCAA rule breaker.  Seems that the General called two Lamar recruits and told them that they would be a good fit “for the program” and that he hoped “he would see them at Lamar”. Bobby’s son Pat coaches at Lamar.   It does not take a former coach of the year to realize that this is a big recruiting no-no and that the rules prohibit anyone except from the coaching staff from calling recruits.  Here is what the Indianapolis Star had to say:

I don’t see any way around this — unless there’s an exception for an icon or legend,” said Dave Ridpath, a former compliance director at Marshall University and now a professor at Ohio University.

“I see no way that Bob Knight can actively recruit for Lamar. All schools deal with this and would love to use high profile folks such as (former NFL quarterback) Chad Pennington at Marshall. But the rule is in place for that very reason — it would be a recruiting advantage

Big Blue Madness is over, but John Calipari’s recruiting machine is churning at full speed.  Gary Harris and Amile Jefferson will visit Lexington this weekend.  Both are five star players in the 2012 class.  Harris is rated as the second best shooting guard and Jefferson is the fourth best power forward in this class and both are guys that Kentucky has really picked up the recruiting pace on recently.

John Calipari has leaked some details of his teams early practices so far and he has made six observations about his teams first six practices thus far.  Here are the observations that Cal has made:

1.  These kids bring it.

2.  They are their brother’s keeper.

3.  Coach Hall’s observation

4.  The veterans are changing

5.  They are who they thought they were

6.  How we’ll play

For more details, check out Coach Cal’s blog on his site. 

Richie Farmer is currently running for Lieutenant Governor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, bu it turns out that may not be his dream job after all.  Turns out that his dream job would be Kentucky’s athletic director some day. 

Seems that the members of the Jacksonville State Gamecocks continue to provide Kentucky with locker room bulletin board material.  It’s kind of weird that Jacksonville State is a FCS school with just one win over a FBS school in the past several years and that was a 1 point win over Ole Miss last year.  But the talk keeps coming.  JSU DB Brooks Robinson had this to say:

“We don’t think of anybody as bad; we prepare for everybody the same. We think everybody is going to be good because we know everybody is going to play us hard.”

“They’ve been planning for two weeks. And it’s their homecoming, too. I hope we ki
ll them; well, not kill them. I don’t want to spoil anyone’s homecoming, but any team I want to beat. We try to upset everybody. We’re trying to establish who we are.”

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