As with many Kentucky fans across the nation, my love for the Kentucky Wildcats has been re-energized with the beginning of the John Calipari Era.  As the new head coach in probably the biggest college basketball market in America, Coach Calipari has already proven that he's the man for the job.  He understands and embraces two critical aspects of the UK basketball program that Coach Billy Gillispie clearly didn't. 

#1-UK absolutely does not recruit mediocre players;

#2-Kentucky should be in the conversation for a national championship almost every single year.  

For 95% of college programs, that's a pretty tall order.  And for passionate Kentucky fans such as myself, these lofty expectations have been ignored for far too long. When UK fired Billy Gillispie on March 31, I felt like Kentucky's shot at a title was so distant, I couldn't see it with the Hubble Telescope. However, in just a month and a half, John Calipari has taken a floundering Kentucky program to what most are calling a Final Four contender.  His recruiting class (with a little help from two of Billy Gillispie's recruits to be fair) is the unanimous #1 ranked class in the nation.  Some are even calling it one of the best recruiting classes in the history of college basketball! 

So with the sudden and long overdue rise of one of the most storied programs in history, what are people saying about it?  Ahh yes...of course...he's too good.  He's just a cheater.  I find it harder and harder to stomach all the slanderous articles written about Coach Calipari, all of which are pure speculation and repeat the same tired lines...he plays in the "grey area" too much, or he finds loopholes in the system, he's a slime ball-a cheater (pitchforks and torches pumping in the air).  

My response is simple, stop acting like jealous hypocrites.  The bottom line is, he is doing exactly what the best coaches in the game must do to compete and win, and he does it better than your guy.  Calipari knows by now what is and what isn't against the rules, and he will have no problem recruiting star athletes to UK without breaking them.  He is undeniably one of the top coaches in the game today because kids love his style of play.  If you think your coach hasn't worked the system, or bent the rules to land a blue chip athlete, you're flat out kidding yourself.       

Yeah he's a little arrogant, maybe even pompous, but he has a knack for telling people and the media just the right thing. That's part of what being the head coach at the University of Kentucky is about (and more examples of where Coach Gillispie fell short).  He enjoys the pressure that the UK job brings with it, and I think it has never been more important to him that he lives up to expectations.  He understands that he has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build a "god-like" legacy at UK that he couldn't do at any other university. Someone with his ego definitely wouldn't want to jeopardize that legacy for the sake of landing a couple star recruits.