OT- Who is the dirtiest college basketball coach of all time

Submitted by Boner Stabone on

Watching the tourney this weekend with all my friends and seeing Kentucky play, we all wondered how long it would be until John Calipari and UK would have their eventual title stripped from them for Calipari's dirty antics. 

We started to discuss who is/was the dirtiest NCAA b-ball coach of all time.  Names like Jerry Tarkanian, Kelvin Sampson, Jim Harrick, and Calipari arose.  Are there any others out there that are/were dirty that I am forgetting about?  Curious to hear who you think the dirtiest coach out there was/is ?

LBSS

March 24th, 2015 at 11:51 AM ^

Not relevant and I'm honestly not sure why this bothers me so much, but by god this is terrible writing: "If Wooden was the father figure of UCLA basketball, Gilbert was its shadowy one."

Gilbert was its shadowy one what? Shadowy figure? Shadowy father? Shadowy father figure. If the latter, then why doesn't Wooden also get a qualifier on father figure? Shouldn't he be its "sainted" father figure or something?

Just awful. 

Tater

March 24th, 2015 at 12:49 PM ^

Wooden was the "best" at getting results, but Calipari is the best of his era.  Calipari has had Final Four trips vacated at both UMass and Memphis.  Somehow, he emerged witn no consequences.  

I really hope that Calipari has done too "good" a job of cheating at UK.  In the UCLA era, nobody thought twice about the possibility of improprieties.   It was an era of no cable TV and no internet.  There wasn't any information available back then.  A "dynasty" was not questioned; it was worshipped.  

In this era of relative parity, dynasties are questioned.  Schools that have nine McDonald's All Americans on their rosters fall under a lot of scrutiny.  Information that used to take months if not years to move now travels instantaneously across the internet.  

I continue to be amazed at Calipari's hubris and his percieved exemption from consequences.  It's almost like he has abandoned all pretense of running a clean program.  I want to know why the NCAA hasn't done a serious investigation there.  One would think that the NCAA would be as offended at Calipari's behavior as they were with Jerry Tarkanian.  

My only hope is that if UK dominates the tournament, the NCAA will be forced to open its eyes.

True Blue Grit

March 24th, 2015 at 3:33 PM ^

Tha'ts why nothing has happened to them yet investigation-wise.  Sort of like our rivals in the state to the south.   The NCAA likes Kentucky too much - at least the revenues they bring in because of how many people want to watch them in the tournament.  Somehow the NCAA thinks Kentucky is good for college basketball, but I say the opposite is the case.  Having such a high percentage of top 20 players going there every year is anti-parity.  Not to mention KY is making a laughing stock of the whole idea of the student-athlete. 

Bando Calrissian

March 24th, 2015 at 11:22 AM ^

Tark wasn't just dirty, but also a guy who simply adored sticking it to the NCAA. 

John Wooden could be on that list, squeaky-clean image and all. He invented the improper benefit in college basketball. Calipari, Boeheim, Jimmy V, and of course, Bob Huggins.

M go Bru

March 24th, 2015 at 6:46 PM ^

Jimmy V was real scummy. I think his graduation rate was under 15%.

God punished him by shortening his life by cancer. No sympathy from me. And the BBall media anointed him a saint. How repulsive! It makes me want to vomit every time they bring up his name.

I'm sure Tark's graduation rate was anemic as well. He took all the hardship players who could not get into any other school due to grades.

goblue81

March 24th, 2015 at 7:02 PM ^

Outside of the Tark era, would UNLV even be thought of as a basketball destination?  Not a chance.  Tark put  together the only team I've seen in my lifetime that could compete with Wooden's UCLA teams.  Plus they were in Vegas.  I have no knowledge or proof or anything, but you can't tell me that team got assembled in Vegas without any shadiness.

I know a lot people are saying Calipari, and yeah at Memphis and UMass he probably was very dirty.  I don't think he is at UK.  He simply beat all other coaches to idea of how to handle the new 1 and Done rule AND EMBRACED it.   I mean look at this year's team - what 8-9 solid NBA players on it (most Frosh).  And, its just every year the same thing over and over.  He doesn't need to cheat anymore.  HE and UK are now the top players in HS #1 destination before heading the pro's.  

LSAClassOf2000

March 24th, 2015 at 12:41 PM ^

There is something a little uncommon about the fact that someone who has coached a team at some level since the late 1960s as Brown has to have such a lengthy resume of short stops (Kansas might have been his longest, and that's only 5-6 years, I think), but at the same time, he is thought of generally as one of the great teachers and turnaround artists in the game recently and has had success in that regard (well, OK, the Knicks....but in most other cases....).

What's interesting is that Brown played for Dean Smith, who in turn played for Phog Allen at Kansas, who in turn played for James Naismith himself. When Brown left Kansas, he was replaced by Roy Williams, who of course is now UNC's coach. Funny how it works out. 

ypsituckyboy

March 24th, 2015 at 11:32 AM ^

Although he's flying a bit under-the-radar now, I have a feeling Bill Self will be on that list before too long. People talk about Calipari and Kentucky a lot, but Kansas may be worse.

JClay

March 24th, 2015 at 11:34 AM ^

Huggins and Tark are lightyears ahead of Cal in pure filth.

People don't like Cal, they don't like one-and-dones, but his players aren't consistently terrible human beings like Huggins' recruits.

blackstarwolverine

March 24th, 2015 at 11:49 AM ^

The most reasonable Calipari-related comment I've read recently; the man might be the prince of the dark arts of college basketball recruiting, but his program and players tend to stay out of trouble, at least in public, which is more than can be said at neighboring programs (i.e. Louisville) and their national rivals.

Yo_Blue

March 24th, 2015 at 11:36 AM ^

Dana Kirk from Memphis actually went to prison.  Granted, it was for tax evasion, but he personally scalped tickets, took money from boosters, gave money to his athletes, and solicited kickbacks from tournament and shoe officials.

Runners-up: Tark, Jim Harrick, Calapari

MichiganMAN47

March 24th, 2015 at 11:35 AM ^

Some would put Fisher into that category. I personally don't think he knew anything but Michigan Haters would put him on the short list.



I'd have to put Calipari at the top at this point in time. Boeheim would be up on that list as for me as well. Pitino used to give me shady vibes, but I don't think anything is going on there and he seems like an honest guy.

In reply to by ijohnb

jmblue

March 24th, 2015 at 1:25 PM ^

I think Fisher was generally willing to see no evil, but there were a couple of documented times when he stopped Ed Martin from paying for things - once on a player's apartment and another time (I think) on plane tickets for a player's relative.  So to say he orchestrated it is probably unfair.  

Bando Calrissian

March 24th, 2015 at 2:26 PM ^

But then there's the fact that he held a seat open on his assistant's bench for half a season so he could lock down Ed Martin's best friend Perry Watson after SW's season ended (and lock down Rose and, in turn, Webber), forged ticket requests in PW's name for Martin, gave Juwan's underqualified HS coach a token job interview for an assistant's position AND a job at Fisher's summer camp, etc. etc. etc. 

Fisher was between a rock and a hard place after his recruiting failures in 1990 (Eric Montross was an absolute shoo-in, and went to UNC instead). He needed to follow up 1989 quickly, and started cutting corners/letting Frieder's old buddy Uncle Ed better access to the program so he could get better recruits in the door. Sure, he looked the other way, and he may have shut down some really egregious things, but Fish was working it in very, very subtle ways to get what he needed. And it spun out of control once Uncle Ed really started rolling. The fact that it continued independently under Ellerbe shows just how fucked the whole thing got.

When you look at what Fisher has done at SDSU, without even a whiff of violations, you see that this was a guy who made some really, really bad decisions in an already-toxic program he had helped build since the late 70s-early 80s (IIRC, he got to Michigan in 1979). In a vacuum, he could have done it the right way over a longer period of time without the Fab Five, but he needed to win now. Add in a dysfunctional athletic department, and boom goes the dynamite.

Ugh. 

ijohnb

March 24th, 2015 at 2:34 PM ^

Fisher was dirty at Michigan.  There is no way to really sugar coat it.  He seems like a good man who just made some mistakes under intense pressure, but he was not just some by-standard who got "mixed up" with the wrong crowd.  He actively participated.

jmblue

March 24th, 2015 at 3:24 PM ^

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Fisher was an innocent victim by any stretch.  He was mentored by Frieder, who certainly knew how to "play the game."  But some of what you describe in that top paragraph is not dirty, per se. The hiring of Watson was reasonable; he was an accomplished high school coach with deep connections in Detroit.  (Unfortunately, those connections included Ed Martin.)  Some program would have hired him if not Michigan.    

The Donnie Kirksey thing falls into murky ethical territory but was not in itself a violation.  That kind of thing is not unusual in basketball recruiting.

The forging of Watson's initials was bad though, and suggested that he knew at least some of what was going on.  At the least, he had to have known Martin's history.  For that I thought he needed to be fired.

I think Fisher did not want to run a dirty program, and when he had evidence directly staring him in the face, he tried to stop it.  But he allowed Martin to become too much of a fixture and did not have the will to chase him away.