Sports

Kentucky coach winning at all costs

In a dishonest but well-paying enterprise, one must admire Kentucky coach John Calipari for his listen-between-the-lines honesty. He knows that we know that he knows that we know that he’s full of it. His terms of engagement and key to riches are to win by hook or by crook, so he packs both.

My favorite Calipari moments came years ago, when he coached UMass to big-time status while establishing his reputation for service to what it takes: institutionalized compromise and corruption. His star at UMass in 1994 was NBA-bound Marcus Camby, who was flunking out.

Well, the next season ESPN’s interview show host, Roy Firestone, had Calipari as his subject. Not that Firestone was known for throwing hard, high ones, but the stench of a cozy setup during this session was enough to make an onion weep.

THE POST LINE: ALL THE ODDS

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Firestone almost apologetically brought up Camby’s rotten grades, the season before, then brightened to deliver the news that Camby had performed a 180 academic slam-dunk — he was now on “The Athletic Director’s Academic Dean’s List.”

Yes, Calipari proudly replied, thanks, Roy, for bringing that up. Calipari followed that with some happy talk about Camby turning it around because he and UMass would never accept less from their student-athletes. Next subject …

Wait a second!

Athletic Director’s Academic Dean’s List? What is that? Never heard of such a thing, not before or since. This was an inside con job; Camby had become a baloney hero. Is being on the Athletic Director’s Academic Dean’s List any different from, say, being the captain of the three-card monte team?

But Calipari carried on as if Camby’s inclusion on the AD’s Academic Dean’s List were irrefutable proof that all was good and clean at UMass under Calipari — as if the AD had no stake in the eligibility of the star of a team that had become a national power and TV money-maker!

Calipari had to know that some of us knew better. What a card. And Calipari carries on, still. Sing it, Sam: From UMass to Memphis, from Memphis to Kentucky.

Not that CBS tomorrow will be inclined to make a big issue of it, but in UConn vs. Kentucky, Jim Calhoun vs. Calipari, there will be two elephants in the room, two whose programs’ misdeeds likely will be quickly and obligatorily mentioned, then just as quickly dropped.

You know TV. We’re likely to be told that the issues have, by now, been “well-documented.”

UConn under Calhoun, Connecticut’s highest-paid employee, regularly has serious recruiting issues, including the illegally recruited and recruitment of the criminally inclined.

Calipari’s two previous Final Fours officially no longer exist, lost to serious NCAA violations. Calipari, though, has always stayed one job ahead of the law. And there’s no hiding the fact that Kentucky Basketball has become a one-and-done depot. So tomorrow’s becomes another one of those pick-yer-poison games. Whatever your rooting interest, you’ll likely have to swallow extra hard knowing you’re being compromised even more than usual, a lot like Auburn-Oregon, 10 weeks ago, for the football championship.

And tomorrow’s winner likely will be favored to win the national championship. How nice.

But the Athletic Director’s Academic Dean’s List? That was a good one.

Yankees telecast restores Opening Kay ‘swagger’

Michael Kay’s terribly over-written open to yesterday’s opener on YES — “rarefied air,” “the Cathedral in The Bronx,” “journey begins anew” — began with how the Yankees need to restore their “swagger.”

Ugh. Yeah, not enough swaggerers in sports. Perhaps Kay can spend an off-day teaching kids to swagger. And why would Alex Rodriguez, with the score tied, one-out, none-on in the sixth, run out a shot to deep right-center when he could pose and jog a triple into a double? Kay gave him a light jab for placing style over substance, but, gee, Rodriguez was only playing with swagger.

And not that Kay or Ken Singleton were going to mention it, but Yankee Stadium, on Opening Day — Opening Day, for crying out loud — had a ton of empty seats, the expensive ones, right field around to left, lower and second decks. Greed kills.

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Gil Clancy, a trainer of champions who, as a CBS analyst throughout the 1980s, gave the nation a taste of how boxing in New York used to sound, died yesterday at 88.

On Saturday afternoon, Nov. 13, 1982, on CBS, Tim Ryan and Clancy called one of the last scheduled 15-round title bouts and among the most infamously brutal — lightweight Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini‘s 14th round knockout of Duk Koo Kim, who died four days later.

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Reader Sal Sessa knows progress when he sees it. He actually saw an ESPN graphic that read that UConn had made the men’s Final Four for the second time in three years instead of, “First time since 2009.”

Too easy to mock Bilas now

Get off his bcak. Though I’m not a big Jay Bilas fan for his condescending analysis, it’s much too easy, now, to mock the ESPN/CBS commentator for knocking the NCAA’s at-large inclusion of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Who among us mocked him when he first said it? Who thought he was dead-wrong when he first said, right after the entire field was announced, that VCU didn’t belong? VCU had lost six of its last nine conference games.

Only when VCU began to roll was he pointed to with derision. In the end, he was wrong, but for the right reasons.

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Liked the way, yesterday, YES allowed the Yankees’ starting lineup, on tape, to introduce itself.

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Jamie Moyer, who last season finally threw his last pitch — perhaps — at 48, has joined ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” team.

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NFL Films boss — its head, heart and soul — Steve Sabol is undergoing aggressive treatment for a cancerous brain tumor. Sabol, 68, is one tough dude. The tout: Take Sabol and the over 80.

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DirecTV is set to drop YES at midnight; the issue is money. Dish Network last night was set to drop SNY; the issue doesn’t seem to be money. The public relation campaigns are on. This stuff never gets tired, does it?

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Credit MSG Network producer Joel Mandelbaum for that disturbing but hopeful two-parter, seen within the last two Knicks telecasts, on the fall to homelessness — living in a car, pond-fishing for meals — and the recent rescue of ex-Knicks star Ray Williams. Both pieces are on MSG’s website.

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Allowing ESPN to create, run and televise a national high school boys and girls basketball tournament is like having Antonio Cromartie chaperone the senior prom.