OT: Calipari, Not Ryan, Elected to Hall of Fame
http://www.sbnation.com/college-basketball/2015/4/5/8347763/john-calipa…
Something about this just seems absurd to me.
Could they both have gotten in?
One would think Bo Ryan making Wisco into a perennial power without the glamorous recruiting would get him elected in...
Forgot to mention Ryan's 4 Div. III titles. Don't those count?
There's no denying that Coach Cal has accomplished a lot more in his career than Ryan. For all of his regular season success, Ryan is only in his 2nd final four and has yet to win it all.
Cal has accomplished so much more. He even has more school sanctions and vacated Final Fours than Ryan! Bo obviously needs to get his shit together before being considered for the Hall.
So you consider a guy with 2 Final Fours and 0 National Championships (as of right now) in 14 years to be more HOF worthy than a guy who has 1 National Championship and 4 Final Fours in just the past 5 years? That's not even considering Cal's ridiculous winning percentage at Kentucky. As someone said below, he's never been directly implicated in any dirty business.
If Cal finally gets caught at UK, will have have to vacate his HoF berth?
Coach John Calipari
- Vacated (1988-1996)
- New Jersey Nets (1996-1999)
- Vacated (2000-2009)
- Vacated (2009-present)
- Dominican Republic National Team (2011-2012)
than just division one? Bo Ryan also coaches at Wisconsin which isn't exactly a hotbed for NBA talent. Meanwhile Calipari has consistently benefitted from coaching NBA talent.(Camby, Rose, Anthony Davis, etc)
How do you and the HoF electors turn a blind eye to the fact the Calipari is a cheater? Just like the baseball players who were caught using steroids, he should not be in the HoF.
he is the only coach to vacate two final four appearances. I guess that stands for something historic.
In college, both coaches have similar overall records, but I honestly beleive Bo's resume is more impressive. Bo has been able to make it to the tournament every year as head coach at Wisconsin, and he has done it with okay talent. Cal missed the tournament with Anthony Davis on his team. Simply put, Bo has done a ton more with less.
Sam Dekker is his highest ranked recruit ever and outside of this tournament, he has only been a solid role player. Bo has won consistently with unknown guys and a clean program while Cal could depend on John Wall, Derick Rose, Marcus Camby, etc. to win and still have controversy follow him wherever he goes.
I hate to defend Cal...but the missed year was the Nerlens Noel year, Davis was already gone.
Not sure how he does it, but I cant fault Cal for getting the big time kids while other coaches struggle a little more.
Davis left the year before. But I feel my point remains the same.
But Cal is an excellent recruiter and gets NBA talent left and right, there is no doubt. My point is that he can depend on that talent to win games rather doing some great coaching with player development. I feel like Bo is in the same boat as Beilein, and I bet most people here would pick Beilein as coach over Cal.
and I enjoy the NBA, so I'd like to see more star players in the NBA arrive there via Michigan. I'd welcome Cal in a second.
If Cal by some miracle is actually clean, then yeah I would take Calipari in a heartbeat too.
Other than him, I can't really picture having anyone else other than Beilein. Coach K, but something tells me his pristine image is fraudulent.
...it's not clear how much of that is due to Calipari's fixers and bagmen and how much of it is simply the infrastructure UK already had in place before he got there.
and OJ wasn't convicted either.
He didn't personally deliver the whores to Camby's hotel rooms; he didn't personally take Rose's board exams. Isn't that enough to completely exonerate him?
legit arguments can be made that pitino, boeheim, calhoun, thompson, etc have done more dirt and have more skeletons in their closets than calipari but im pretty sure theyre already in the HOF (and im not a calipari fan).
news flash - very few, if any, top programs are squeaky clean like some may think.
(cal has just been more honest about it with comments like "i cant regret actions that have truly benefited and helped my players" - plus hes doing the exact same things coaches always have, just on a grander scale since hes bringing in 4-6 top 100 recruits every year, resulting in higher total payment figures and increased media attention)
I think you can make a legit argument that it would be an insult to Ryan to put him in the HOF and lump him with those guys.
If you were to assume that Coach Cal is clean, there's no question of him being more deserving. The man only gets credit for his recruiting, but he's built three great programs at three different schools.
He cannot be directly tied to the shady happenings surrounding Camby and Rose, so if you can't prove he is a cheater, then you have to give him the benefit of the doubt. I do agree that he didn't build lasting programs in large part due to these controversies. And while I also agree with you on Kentucky a bit, they hadn't really been themselves since early in Tubby's career. He had a lot to work with but what he has done there has been far more impressive to me than say what Roy Williams has done at UNC. He got the job at UK because they hoped they could return UK into exactly what he has made. Just because you get a gig at a storied university doesn't mean you automatically have sucess, which seems like it would be rather obvious to any Michigan fan.
Also agree that what he's done at Kentucky is impressive, again when taking it at face value. Ultimately, Cal and UK are the most perfect marriage in college sports (maybe second behind Bama and Saban). He's used the one and done rule and the environment at UK to create a Disneyland for top high schoolers (not wrong in its own right). Honestly, I doubt he needs to engage in shady dealings anymore. His rep and the rep of UK take care of everything. Doesn't make it the "right way" to do things, and I will never respect him as an actual coach (to me he's just a salesman and babysitter), but he isn't technically breaking any rules so far as we know.
and two FF's at this one. The man is a great coach. Certainly better than the cheater Calipari.
Calipari in the hall is a crime. He left both of this previous schools with sanctions and is always on the shady side of things. Not that I am a fan of Izzo, but he is much more deserving IMO.
There's no question that trouble seems to follow him around, but he also hasn't ever been directly implicated in anything, a bit like Steve Fisher and actually far less egregious. I guess one exception is that I beileve he let Derrick Rose's brother travel with the team, which is certainly not allowed.
I guess I just want to dislike him and his program...collecting the best talent doesn't validate his ability to coach. He was outclassed last night, and I certainly enjoyed that.
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Please tell me your screen name is an attempt at irony, because damnit I haven't laughed so hard at anything on this board in at least two years.
I really wish it was your first post, so I'd know you made it up just for this topic. But no....
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And 50% of a college coach's job is to get the bagmen.
Although in this case I think the bagmen are running the show and the coach is along for the ride.
I don't know anything about Saban or Meyer's programs. But we know quite a bit about who's on Calipari's rolodex, and that network has moved with him from job to job.
And as I've said frequently elsewhere, even on this thread, it's quite possible that the network's now able to stand down as far as immediate stuff is concerned because it can be safely left to the locals at UK, where improper benefits have been a very poorly kept secret for longer than I've been alive. Nobody really knows whether they need to do it or not, because nobody around here can remember a time when they weren't.
doesn't give a shit about this right now.
Still only the second most ridiculous Hall of Fame decision of the weekend, since Rob Ford is now in the HHOF's Board of Governors.
Just so we can roll with the ongoing joke, I would like to have "This plaque can be used as legal tender to settle all debts, public or private" on Calipari's plaque just to see what the reaction from Kentucky fans would be.
All the same, per CBS:
He'll become the seventh active college basketball coach to be elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The others are Jim Boeheim, Larry Brown, Mike Krzyzewski, Chris Mullin (in Springfield for his playing exploits), Rick Pitino and Roy Williams
Meh I don't think Pitino's personal life fuck ups really matter in this discussion to be honest. There are a lot of great sports icons that did shitty things in their personal lives.