Calipari doesn't need to cheat

You hear it every day from fans of rival teams, uninformed sports fans, and even the occasional grumpy old coach in a red sweater. (I’m looking at you Bobby Knight) but the notion that John Calipari cheats to bring in top recruits is absolute nonsense. Why in the world would he even need to risk it? He puts countless players in the NBA, hangs up banner after banner, and makes 19 year old kids into house hold names. He makes these kids into rock stars. He doesn't  cheat, and he doesn’t need to not by a long shot.

John Calipari has everything he needs to lure top recruit after top recruit to the bluegrass. He has the marquee program in college basketball, with a rich history to match. He has made players millions by making them lottery picks after just one year. Oh yeah he is also friends with major music stars like Jay-Z and Drake. Not to mention he brings the likes of LeBron James into Rupp Arena to sit court side. Cal has all the bells and whistles. He runs an NBA factory. You’re telling me that Cal can give a kid the chance to hang out with people they have posters of in their rooms, but that he has to pay them to commit? If you believe that then you are simply fooling yourself. He gives these kids the opportunity to meet their idols while becoming one themselves. Ask John Wall or Anthony Davis how that feels. By March those kids were the center of college basketball, and quickly became superstars and number one draft picks. And they have Cal to thank.

I hear every day from the Cal haters that he must be cheating, he must be paying players because there’s no way he could get all the best recruits cleanly. Well he does, and to be honest people should be suspicious anytime a school other than Duke or North Carolina takes a recruit from Cal. Why wouldn’t a top talent go to Kentucky unless they went to a top level school? Why would a kid pick Maryland, Michigan or UCLA over the king of the mountain, Kentucky?  If these fans want the NCAA to go on a witch hunt, they should start with small schools that pull a top recruit out of nowhere.  Logically, and if all programs operate under the same parameters, then Cal should never lose a recruit to a school that isn’t a top tier program. Cal doesn’t have the incentive to cheat, everyone else does because they have to try and beat Cal.

On top of all that? Throw in a national championship. He has everything a recruit would want, so he doesn’t have to offer up anything extra. The NCAA can investigate players all they want and they can feed information to writers like Pete Thamel to try and dig up dirt. The proof is right in front of them. Cal has everything a recruit would want. He doesn’t have to cheat to make up for a lack of winning, or a lack of exposure, and surely not a lack of making players into lottery picks. Everyone else does. Cal has it all, and the recruits that come to Kentucky see it plain as day.

People are jealous. They don’t want to believe that John Calipari can stack top recruiting classes on top of each other year after year without using dirty tactics. They don’t want to believe that he is on his way to becoming of the greatest coaches of all time, quite possibly the greatest. People don’t want to believe that he is real.

He is real, and he is spectacular.