I know it's crazy to think there might be a tiny ounce of dignity left in Calipari, but to take two assistant coaches from the same school is so typical of that slime ball coach and classless program. It will probably work to our advantage that Illinois has to replace half their bench, but still, you just can't help but shake your head at Calipari....the whole thing reeks of desperation. I hope they're terrible again this year...and every year.
OT SIAP: This Just In - Calipari is a Sleaze-ball
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I hate it when I'm forced to defend John Calipari on here. But the issue here isn't him personally, it's what he did here -- because it could just as easily have been some other coach who did the same thing. So I'll just focus on the action itself.
Your criticism of this is nonsense. First of all, Calipari has a relationship with Antigua that goes back to Calipari's days at Memphis. So it's not as if he was just some random target.
But, more importantly, where is it written -- or even unwritten -- that coaches can't poach assistants from other schools? I mean, I guess it's rare that they'd get two from the same school at the same time. But....so?
They operate in a very competitive business. And, just like any other very competitive business, coaches are always out looking for the best talent they can get around them. Illinois' Men's BB program isn't Kentucky Men's BB program BFF. They're competitors. They compete for recruits. They compete on the floor. They compete for championships.
So why shouldn't they compete for assistant coaches?
I don't know what you do for a Living, but suppose a Competing Employer approached you with an offer to work for them doing the same work and offering a higher salary, or a better opportunity to advance your career more quickly. I'm sure you would weigh the pros and cons including location, family situation, recreational opportunities, crime rate, School Systems and other non-monetary factors affecting your Family. If you thought it was a better opportunity, and your family supported your decision, why wouldn't you take it?
I'd guess he would -- or at least consider it.
But that's not even the nature of his complaint, as I read it. He's not taking issue with Coleman and Antigua jumping ship. He's taking issue with Calipari for poaching two assistants from the same school simultaneously...as if this was a violation of the unwritten rules of the coaching fraternity.
In your example, I'm sure that his existing employer would not like having his employees go to a competitor for a better offer. I'm an employer and I can assure you, I've had it done to me and I didn't like it. I've also hired away people from competitors. And I'm sure they didn't like that.
But it happens. And, really, it's just the nature of any competitive endeavor. We all accept competing for customers. But it rubs some people the wrong way when employers compete for employees.
Reportedly, Illinois made counter-offers to one or both of the two assistants. But, the point is, they apparently got outbid -- either monetarily or otherwise. That's how competition works. And there is nothing the least bit unethical or deceitful about it.
OP could have stopped at the post's title and gotten plenty of agreement.
I'm assuming there are some high profile recruits packaged in the deal.
That I think is the key to how unethical this my or may not be. If several players now transfer to KY.........
Even if that does happen, I fail to see any ethical problem with it. The transfer portal rules apply the same to everybody.
How many people here were aghast at what Kelvin Sampson did with Eric Gordon? Now, keep in mind, this was well before he got back in trouble with the NCAA. Bruce Weber was famously livid at Sampson for it. Illinois fans were ready to come and torch Bloomington for it. Deron Williams, when he was in the NBA, was asked a question about Gordon and said "I don't know who that is."
Now, I'm sure there were some IU fans who were uncomfortable about going after a recruit who had committed elsewhere. But I was not among them. And I think the majority of us (on these boards anyway) were all for it.
IMO, it was a pretty good bellwether for how prepared we were to compete in the cutthroat world of college basketball in the post-Knight era. There was nothing that violated any rules there. Obviously, it pissed off Illinois -- and would've pissed us off if the roles had been reversed.
But that's life in a competitive realm.
Wait until Woody starts running bums off the roster to make room for better recruits
The OP is going to lose his sh*t.
The moral high ground doesn’t win in big time CBB.
The OP is going to lose his sh*t.
The moral high ground doesn’t win in big time CBB.
So, instead of being Creaned it will now be Wood-Chopping?
Have a really hard time seeing Woody running anyone off the roster. If you listen to the interviews and look at how he's operated so far, that doesn't seem to be his style.
Creaning happened because Crean over recruited and offered guys who had no business playing high major D1 basketball. I don't see Woodson doing that, but at the same time there might be occasion where a better player becomes available and a tough choice has to be made. That's life. Anyone who is cut can go play elsewhere or stay and finish his degree for free. It's not the end of the world.
I certainly hope not. Occasionally helping a kid who can't cut it find a new, better opportunity would be one thing, but routinely over-signing and running kids off is not only the wrong thing to do, it will come back to bite you in the ass.
Maybe he knows who took Derick Roses SAT’s .
Heads in the sand. As long as they don't advocate for IU reporting themselves to the NCAA I could care less what fairytale they want to believe in their head.
To me this is less revealing of Calipari (as we already know what he is) and more revealing of the two coaches who would want to work for Cal.
So you cite rule-breaking coaches to criticize an act that is completely within the rules?
There’s nothing illicit or unethical about poaching assistant coaches. It may be savage. But fortune favors the bold.
And wasn’t OA both a UK alum and former assistant for Cal? Nothing wrong with what happened.
He went to Pitt. Played for the Globetrotters too.
But, yes, he was an assistant for Calipari at both Memphis and Kentucky.
But I don’t really even think that is all that important. What’s important is that assistant coaches can work wherever they want and HCs can hire assistants away from other schools.
Antigua is reportedly going to be paid around $2M by Kentucky. And more power to him.
The IT company I worked for did much the same thing. We pouched the hell out of K-Mart's IT staff, back in the 80's when K-Mart was still viable. They had some good talent in certain technologies and we went after it. More recently, we began to pull in the top end of the Walmart IT staff. Of course we got mixed results from those folks, as you might expect, but we also got some good ones too. No such thing as professional courtesy in the hiring business. If those two assistant coaches can make more money at UK than UI, I don't blame anybody but the AD at UI.
Then there is the other side of the story. Maybe Slimly Cal needed some new bagmen that knew how to avoid the FBI. Why not go to the school that seemed to pull in some of the recruits that had asked for money during their recruitment (I don't recall which kids, so please don't ask me to defend this unfounded and completely random accusation). Of course Underwood would never buy recruits, right?
Then there is the other side of the story. Maybe Slimly Cal needed some new bagmen that knew how to avoid the FBI. Why not go to the school that seemed to pull in some of the recruits that had asked for money during their recruitment (I don't recall which kids, so please don't ask me to defend this unfounded and completely random accusation). Of course Underwood would never buy recruits, right?
You mis understand. The point I was trying to make, and I guess did not, was that wether legal/illegal, ethical/unethical, or nice/not nice that seems to be the way it is now.
I turned down multiple opportunities as the morality or niceness was below what I wanted to have as my business. I did not make the money on those that I could have.
Maybe I was wrong and it is all just accepted now.
Well, OK.
But the distinction between compliance and defiance of NCAA rules is still an important one. Or, at least, it should be. One can certainly say that the NCAA has become a laughingstock as far as enforcement goes. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us should be casually blurring those lines.
Bill Self and Sean Miller have apparently been breaking NCAA rules. And it’s not right to compare them or what they allegedly did with the fully legal poaching of assistant coaches.
There’s nothing untoward, let alone illicit, about what John Calipari did here. He outbid a competitor — twice. And that’s life in a competitive world.
The NCAA allows it. If players decide they want to go elsewhere to follow a coach, or feel there is a better fit, nothing unethical about that. This whole thread is stupid
I agree you are completely correct about there being a difference between what is illegal and what is “dirty pool” ( does anyone use that expression anymore?).
But if you are talking about your reputation and what example you want to set for your children; is there now a difference?
Maybe I am completely wrong. For today, if you can get away with it, do it.
I’m sure we could agree that there are things that are technically within a set of governing rules, but ethically dubious nonetheless.
I just don’t think what happened here qualifies. This was just big dollar, bare knuckles competition for high output talent. And the bigger dollars won, as they usually do.
Seeing Pujols in the news lately reminds me of when the Angels just flat outbid the Cardinals for him. The Angels were willing to pay a higher price for a star player. How is this any different? Underwood and Illinois don’t own Antigua and Coleman, after all. They’re for-hire coaches.
A good example from college basketball that I would agree is ethically shady, but technically legal, is the shoe-sponsored teams fielded by the fathers of high-level recruits like Bagley and Langford.
That is the basketball pay-to-play equivalent of a very creative tax avoidance scheme that takes advantages of deficiencies in the tax code. Legal as per the text of the rules....but probably never intended to be so.
If the NCAA shut the door on these, I would understand why. Because it is clearly a way for the shoe companies (and, by proxy, their affiliate programs) to curry favor with high-value recruits using their piles of cash. However you justify it, the end result is shoe money in the pocket of recruits’ families.
