Things have been a little bit too chummy between Rick Pitino and John Calipari in recent years. Chummy might not be the right word, but the thinly-veiled public insults that were so commonplace during Cal's early years in Lexington have certainly slowed down since the Cards won the national championship in 2013.
Or at least they had slowed down.
Calipari appeared on the radio with Mike Lupika on Tuesday and fired an early summer grenade in the direction of Louisville when he was asked a question about how responsible head coaches should be held for what happens within their program.
Well it depends on who that coach is. There will be some coaches where everybody will say, 'well there's no way he knew.' And there will be other coaches where they'll say, 'well he knew what he knew that that happened with that family in 8th grade. He knew. You know he knew.' You know, it's all what people are going to say.
All I can tell you is this: If it happens on your campus and it happens with your assistants and those people, you probably have a pretty good idea of what's going on. If it happens back in their home town, it happens back with their family or other ways, there's no way you can know. You just don't know. So, all I would say is most coaches have an idea if it happened on their campus. You might not be the first to know about it, but you eventually hear about it.
It's unfortunate, you wish there was more consistency about how they do things in the NCAA. There's a belief out there of selective enforcement, and some people will call right to Emmert and say, ‘Get these people off me,' and it changes. It's selective.
My life, even as a college student, has all been through the NCAA, and I'm telling you there's so much good that comes out of it. We have lost our way, they have lost their way, and that's all I've been saying. And everybody is mad at me and I'm the worst guy in the world and all that. I'm fine with that. I'm at that age where I really don't care what you think. I'm at that age now. All I know is how will history judge us, and history is going to judge us by the legacy we leave with our own players. How are they? Do they know we're for them? Your legacy is your players.
History's going to talk about all of us, and it isn't going to be a guy that's friends with your enemies.
Cal then went into a lengthy spiel about how thanks to the rise of the Internet and social media, it's no longer possible for so-called journalists to write biased or half-true stories without getting called out. He went on to say that he no longer has to do radio interviews or leak information, because if he wants something out there, he simply puts it out there himself. His entire point essentially being that he can mold his own narrative and that the media can no longer define him.
First things first, that "I'm old and I don't care about what people think about the things I say" bit seems awfully familiar, but I can't seem to put a finger on where I heard it first.
Second, if you want to come out and say that you think Rick Pitino -- and, to a lesser extent, Roy Williams -- get preferential treatment from the NCAA and a certain faction of college hoops writers, then come out and say it. Being able to "craft your own narrative" removes the need to be super, super passive aggressive.
Also, this whole notion that there's no way a coach can avoid knowledge about anything that happens on a college campus but can't possibly have any knowledge of something that happens in a player's hometown is probably a stance that could use an expanded explanation.
But whatever, I'm just happy to see the return of the summer war of words. Here's hoping for something from Rick Pitino on the jealous, malicious and paranoid in the very near future.
You can hear the entire interview with Lupika below. The conversation in question begins at the 29:32 mark.
