LEXINGTON, Ky. – The question was about shoe contracts, whether it was morally wrong for college basketball players to collect endorsement dollars or simply against NCAA rules.
John Calipari’s answer, such as it was, read like a passage from Ulysses as translated by Dick Vitale: stream-of-consciousness, free association, animated and yet aggravating, and so far afield that at about the eight-minute mark of his media day response, the Kentucky basketball coach paused to inquire, “Why did you guys get me started on that?”
Here, in microcosm, was the core problem facing college basketball: the inability to coherently address the systemic issues plaguing the sport.