Its hard to defend Cal with facts, because usually where there is smoke there is fire, but the fact is, as far as I could find, the only infraction Calipari has committed was letting Derrick Rose's brother ride the team plane when he was at Memphis.
Portions of the official NCAA report on UMASS completely exonerated Calipari with the agent that paid Camby even stating that Calipari was an innocent vicitim in the whole ordeal.
At one point in his career, he wasn't afraid to go after a certain kind of player, usually a troubled but gifted inner city kid who had a sketchy past and two of these players ended up biting him in the ass and tainting his career - Camby and Rose.
Do I think he's shady? Yeah I think he's a slick, very gifted salesman who says anything and everything if he thinks it sounds good coming out of his mouth. Its also a fact he left two schools on probation which just reeks of shadiness, instead of sticking it out and taking the punishment with the schools since the transgressions happened on his watch. But on the other hand, and how this happened is a mystery, when he left each of those schools, it was to take much better jobs. This is his argument. Its not like he left to take to take lateral positions or take whatever he could get in order to get the hell out of town away from the scandals. He went to the NBA after UMASS and Kentucky after Memphis, both of which were a big step up for him.
Who knows, 5 years after his run at Kentucky, there might be 100 violations he's left in his wake. I know his detractors honestly believe that will be the case. I'm not so sure though because since 1989, and being threatened with the death penalty, UK has built a compliance department that seems to triple check everything.
