NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

The College Basketball world has spent the past 48 hours constantly debating whether John Calipari would leave the Memphis program he built from obscurity for the Kentucky Wildcats.  The coverage was so intense that thousands of fans tuned into a webcast watching a door to the Memphis Athletic Department!  The door even spawned a Facebook group titled I watched “The Door” For Hours.

Now that the suspense of Calipari accepting the Kentucky job is over, the real watch turns to his incoming recruits at Memphis.  Apparently there were addendum’s to their National Letters of Intent allowing them to leave if Coach Calipari left for another job.  They were widely considered the top recruiting class in the country and convincing them to attend Kentucky would send a tidal wave across college basketball recruiting.  It’s not hard to envision the Wildcats in next year’s Final Four.

However, should this be in compliance with NCAA rules?  Dick Vitale, for one, believes no.

Will this hire lead to future coaching hires being based on an incoming recruiting class?  Is this fair?  What do you think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under College Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.