Somewhere in Las Vegas, Phil Ivey is risking stacks of cranberry-colored $25,000 chips on rolls of the dice. Somewhere in North Carolina, Michael Jordan will win or lose the cash equivalent of a mid-size luxury sedan on a golf course. And somewhere in a Hollywood studio, another contestant will tell Howie Mandel he'll open one more case instead of taking the banker's offer on "Deal or No Deal."
But none of them will face stakes higher than those facing Kentucky coach John Calipari.
Calipari arrives at Kentucky with savior-like expectations. His unsurpassed recruiting prowess and the memories of what UK looks like in its full glory make the Wildcats' goals anything but modest. In short, Cal's Cats have to be Final Four contenders in the next two years, if not win the NBA's Eastern Conference.
And if that was the whole challenge, Calipari would be alright. Plenty of coaches have had disappointing stints under the spotlight and lived to tell about it. Even Kelvin Sampson, disgraced through recruiting improprieties at Indiana and Oklahoma, found a golden parachute as an NBA assistant in Milwaukee. Yes, if Calipari's teams underperform on the court, the resulting fan backlash would be uncomfortable and even, at times, nasty. But his track record suggests an even more devious worst-case scenario.
Calipari is trying to outrun an ever-growing pack of NCAA wolves dressed in suits and armed with recruiting rulebooks. In his last two collegiate stops at UMass and Memphis, Calipari evaded the pack, but saw his legacy, seasoned by reports of academic fraud, devoured from history. Those Final Four trips led by Marcus Camby and Derrick Rose? Sorry, according to the revised NCAA history books, those are now figments of your sports memory.
But sins at UMass and Memphis can be forgiven when the coach is the program. Sure, it's not ideal for a coach to reach ill-begotten success and flee town before the NCAA posse finds him. But what would UMass or Memphis have been without Calipari? Even in spite of the messy breakup, UMass and Memphis fans should have warm feelings about their relationships with Coach Cal.
Kentucky is different. Calipari's scorched-earth policy on NCAA rules can't be swept under the rug there. For a school that faced the devastation of brutal sanctions not even two decades ago, winning within the rules matters. Wildcat fans know Calipari's past and the shadowy landscape of today's recruiting world. But that happened and happens in other programs, they'd tell you. Kentucky has been Kentucky for decades without Calipari and still will be when he leaves. The only question is, will the Kentucky he leaves be in a state of nuclear winter after the NCAA retaliates for the next link in his chain of scandals?
And that's why the stakes are so high. Calipari's challenge is to elevate Kentucky back from middling St. Charles Place to Boardwalk status without sullying the program's reputation or crippling its future. If Cal can do it, the cries that his past successes were a mirage projected by his corruption will fall silent and his resume of national success with three distinctly different programs will headline his page in college basketball history. But if he fails in any of those charges, it will be a fatal third strike for his legacy and yet another humiliation for one of the sport's proudest fan bases.
Don't let the bluegrass fool you; there is no greener college hoops pasture than Lexington, KY. But if Calipari can't separate his knack for winning from his pattern of scandal, his career will be put out to pasture.
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