Coach Cal talks about his portrayal in the media

Before all this chatter about realignment flooded the college hoops news feeds, the talk from this summer centered around a potential controversy involving Eric Bledsoe's high school transcript. If you remember, Bledsoe made a notable jump in GPA between his junior and senior years, and a New York Times article penned by Pete Thamel exposed this back in May.

Kentucky Sports Radio, the preeminent Kentucky sports blog run by Matt Jones, has been Calipari's first line of defense, especially when dealing with the media. Two days after the Thamel story broke, Jones went off on Pat Forde -- with his collateral damage being Mike Freeman and Thamel -- questioning the ethics of the three sportswriters. It isn't the first time that Jones has thrown someone under the bus in his defense of the Kentucky program. Anyway, if you can get past the blind homerism, Jones actually does make some good points.

Yesterday, Jones had to opportunity to chat with John Calipari at a basketball camp the coach was running and addressed the issues with the media. When asked if there is a double standard, and if he believes the media is out to get him, Cal responded:

I hope not. I don't believe that and I don't know why they would be. But what does happen is that you start to see agendas and I don't know if its always been that way or what. But here is what I will tell you about coaching at Kentucky: its like being in politics, our core fans in this state will love what we are doing. And if you sit in the seat I am, its great because they love you. The other side however is trying to unseat you by any means, be it innuendo or rumor. They say things like 'where there is smoke there is fire.' And the guy is standing on the side with a billow, pumping smoke in there. But I guess that's the way it is and you have to live with it if you are coaching at Kentucky. Your kids are going to get scrutiny that makes you say, 'what is that about, that's nothing?' That's why I say, you cant be a 35 year old coach and take this job and go through what I have been going through. I have been fired once, I have had about every nasty thing written about any human being has been written about me. I can't even tell you what hasn't been written about me. But after a while you just deal. I am about our kids, our program, our state and that is really all I worry about. Everything else is just wasting time.

There's a lot of interesting content in there, and he does have a point. Calipari has never been caught red-handed committing any kind of violation. Sure, he's had two Final Four vacated and he operates right on the line of legality, but no one -- including Thamel, who spent months investigating Kentucky, Bledsoe, and Calipari -- has been able to pin anything on him. That is why we as writers use the phrase "where there is smoke, there is fire", but then isn't that just adding to the smoke? When a writer speculates about Calipari's guilt, all it does is create a more toxic atmosphere surrounding the coach. That's how rumor spreads.

Having said that, Calipari has to be able to understand why he is under this amount of scrutiny. Like it or not, the fact of the matter is that he has had two Final Fours erased from the record books, the only coach ever to have that happen. Right before news of the second vacation broke, Cal made headlines by leaving Memphis for Kentucky, a school with arguably the most dedicated and loyal fan base in the country.

Any coach at Kentucky is going to be under immense pressure, from the fans and the media alike (its why Billy Gillispie only lasted two years), but when you are a coach that's earned the nickname 'Teflon John', its safe to say that the media is going to be on red alert.

And when you are John Calipari coaching at Kentucky and you land back-to-back-to-back stellar recruiting classes, which includes big-time talents that many considered to be heading elsewhere (DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, Terrence Jones, Enes Kanter, Marquis Teague), you are just going to have to accept the fact that your name -- and any scandal with your name associated -- is going to sell papers and rack up page views.

Simple as that.

Its not necessarily that the media is trying to unseat Coach Cal, or even that they dislike him. It just so happens that in the current situation, the job is to investigate him and speculate about him.