Fed up with the NCAA? Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari doesn't believe you're going to have to worry about it much longer.
Quoted in an in-depth interview with The Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy, Calipari said he doesn't believe the NCAA will continue to control major-conference college athletics by the time he retires. Calipari is 53.
Calipari was responding to a question about the Final Fours his teams at Memphis and UMass were forced to vacate.
An excerpt:
They're not going to be around long. The NCAA will not. Before I retire from coaching, they will no longer oversee college athletics. They will, but it won't be the four power conferences--they'll be on their own. And the main thing is, do you really care about these kids? They'll get mad that I say it. The NCAA Tournament, for example. It's more about the selection committee getting on TV, everybody getting their tickets on the aisle, down low, all the parties they go to, the traveling. But we don't take the parents of the participants. But they take their kids and their families.
The officials will get better hotels than some of their teams. And I know it for a fact. The decisions they make on the $2,000 (expense allowance for student-athletes)--it should have been $4,000. It's a stipend. It's not salary. It's not "pay-for-play." It's a stipend. It's expenses. And then schools vote against it. All this stuff piles up to where people are going to say, "Enough's enough."
