Buster Sports

Remember the 2007-08 Memphis Tigers -- a feel-good story about a team that struggled initially in a strong conference, but managed, with the help of an incredibly close, albeit not that talented, seniors to struggle through the regular season, win the conference and make a run at a National Title before falling just short in the title game but managed to land their hard-luck coach an extension with the school he so dearly loved after a Final Four appearance?

Of course you don't! Why? BECAUSE THAT NEVER HAPPENED. What did happen is this: John Calipari assembled yet another crew of one-and-dones -- specifically Derrick Rose, who's test scores caused the NCAA investigation -- Memphis rolled to the Conference USA title (because C-USA sucks incredibly hard) and eventually ended up falling just short of the national championship.

Good thing they didn't win though, because it was announced today (via a Memphis Commercial Appeal source) that the Tigers will be forced to vacate the entire 2008-09 season. Yes. That's correct. The entire season.

However, while the punishment is pretty tough, let's remember that we are talking about a team that was coached by John Calipari. In other words, we shouldn't expect anything different. Coach Cal lost a season at UMass and now he's done the same -- almost to no one's surprise -- at Memphis.

Kentucky fans will act like everything's all fine and dandy, but remember, they passed on this guy the first time because he was too shady and they weren't desperate enough. Then the Billy Gillispie era flopped and suddenly they couldn't stop extolling the virtue of Cal's character. 

But I suppose it's not really fair to sit here and lash out at Kentucky fans just for embracing the guy; the proper thing here is to console those poor Memphis fans who are the only people suffering in this event. They lose an entire season. Cal? He loses nothing. He just gets to keep on riding whatever wave he's on, until one day it (hopefully) falls out from underneath him and actually gets him, instead of someone else.

Memphis, Memphis Vacated Season, John Calipari, Derrick Rose, Billy Gillispie, Feature