Does the NCAA Not Have Better Things To Do?

By Dennis Berry

The NCAA wonders why people believe that they do whatever they want. Well if you were looking for evidence for that then you have some with Kentucky and John Calipari's 500th win celebration.

Or was the celebration a little premature? According to the NCAA it was.

The history involving John Calipari and the NCAA is well documented. The Calipari coached University of Massachusetts Minutemen had their 1996 Final Four vacated after it was learned that Marcus Camby accepted gifts. Then the University of Memphis had its entire 2007-08 season and 2008 Final Four vacated. This was after the NCAA ruled that a player, many believe Derrick Rose, although he was not named by the NCAA, had his SAT scored ruled invalid.

That is a total of 42 wins that have been vacated because of NCAA violations. So that means that when the University of Kentucky had a celebration after defeating the Florida Gators in February it was not exactly Calipari's 500th win. This was an issue that the NCAA addressed with Kentucky weeks after the celebration took place. Kentucky and the NCAA went back and forth on the issue. You can view the exchange between the NCAA and Kentucky thanks to the Cat's Illustrated website.

Kentucky was trying to celebrate Calipari's victories, while also noting that some of those wins had been vacated because of violations. The NCAA did not buy into that. They stated that Kentucky must issue a statement saying that they made an "error" in celebrating the 500th win. Kentucky did just that.

Kentucky says that Calipari win total is 467, which is what the NCAA says.

The question is will the NCAA stop only Kentucky for this? Kentucky was not the only program to recognize a coach's milestone win. San Diego State University recognized head coach Steve Fisher's 400th career win. It was not only SDSU and the Mountain West Conference, but other outlets recognized Fisher's 400th win.

Fisher who was the head coach at the University of Michigan in the 1990's, had two of his trips to the Final Four vacated because of NCAA violations. San Diego State still counts those wins in Fishers total wins, too. So will the NCAA send a letter to San Diego State about this?

The NCAA has a lot going on right now. They have a major investigation surrounding the Ohio State football program. They are also looking into the University of North Carolina football program. Yet it found time to concentrate on a school celebrating a milestone win, while another school did the same thing a month earlier and nothing ever happened at the other school. There was no mention of it by the NCAA or media.

And the NCAA wonders why people believe they do what they want and go after whoever they want.

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