by Tony Basilio
My buddy Lloyd Daugherty, the most Southern person I know, has often remarked that there are two fundamentally different species of Northern émigré: There are Yankees, and there are Northerners.
According to Lloyd, the latter group consists of people of otherwise sound constitution who were born into the heathen wilds beyond the Mason-Dixon Line through no fault of their own. Northerners are a proud, noble people, some of whom may one day look skyward, see the Light and move to the Promised Land, rising above both breeding and circumstance. I pride myself on belonging to the Northern species.
But then there are also those soulless and pitiable individuals, feral spawn of the North who are born beyond all hope of reformation. When one of these cretins does move Southward, he inevitably tries to impose the savage and ugly dictates of his id on those around him, who are usually decent Southern people of breeding and good sense. John Calipari, the head basketball coach at Memphis, is one such member of that awful species. John Calipari is a Yankee.
Calipari, you may remember, rose to prominence a few years ago as a sort of poor man's Rick Pitino. Diminutive, disturbingly well-groomed, and Italian American, both men parlayed their success into multi-million dollar deals in the NBA. And both of them subsequently returned to the college ranks after washing out of the pro game, Pitino having done so twice.
But while Pitino, who has since found a home in the Commonwealth, now exhibits some heretofore hidden characteristics of a perfectly redeemable Northerner, Calipari remains an unremitting and unapologetic Yankee.
It seems that about a year-and-a-half ago, Calipari remarked in a fit of insurgent hubris that he was tired of playing the University of Tennessee in basketball every year. He further opined that it didn't make sense for the mighty Memphis basketball program to give the Vols a game in Memphis every other year.
What that means, of course, is that even though the two teams reside within the same geo-political boundary, and both sets of fans relish the home-and-home series, Calipari would put an end to it because, well, it's his show, and he'll run it however he sees fit.
Buzz Peterson and the UT brass were shocked by Calipari's comments, and even moreso by the fact that his refusal to schedule future games with UT was conveyed through the media. It was a decidedly dunderheaded (not to mention classless) way to handle relations with the state of Tennessee's anchor institution. And no matter how much it rankles his leprous Yankee sensibilities, Calipari must come to grips with the fact that Memphis is indeed a part of Tennessee—albeit a part that many of us would just as soon trade off to Arkansas in exchange for a plate of deep-fried hog jowls and a city to be named later.
Enter Mike Hamilton, UT's new athletic director. You see, Hamilton knew that Tennessee had leverage over the school we in the media affectionately refer to as Tiger High. Between 2004 and 2010, Tennessee was scheduled to play Memphis no less than five times on the gridiron. So Hamilton calmly alerted Memphis Athletic Director R.C. Johnson that unless Calipari reconsidered and put Tennessee back on the basketball schedule in 2004, he would put the kibosh on a football series that had been a veritable windfall to the U of M.
R.C., who has been aptly dubbed 'Really Crazy' by one Memphis scribe, responded by announcing that Memphis was "moving forward" to end both the football and basketball series with UT, gibbering something about how the Memphis football program would henceforth play for bowl games, not pay-days. Remember, this nonsense is coming from a school that has participated in exactly two bowl games in its painfully long and ignominious football history.
Publicly, R.C. said the rationale behind his decision was that the home-and-home series with UT just weren't working out for Tiger High. But we know that what R.C. was really doing was Covering Ass for his twit Yankee basketball coach, a guy who, like so many arrogant Yankee twits before him, felt uniquely, qualified to Call the Shots.
And that's where this one ends, Jack. Because we also know that money, power, and the influential boosters who wield them, are the forces that really call the shots at every college sports program. And it would seem that the upper echelon of Memphis alumni had no interest in seeing either the UT/Memphis football or basketball series come to an end.
Thus, about two weeks ago, Really Crazy and his nattering little weasel of a coach started singing a different tune. Now Mr. Crazy and Mike Hamilton are once again trying to hammer out plans for the future hoops and football series between the two schools.
Kudos to Hamilton for showing the moxie to call Memphis out for what it is: with a fourth-rate athletics program that can ill afford to snub a mutually beneficial arrangement with the University of Tennessee.
And here's a special aside to Calipari, who in interviews has proven himself unable to figure the correct pronunciation of the word "Vol": It rhymes with "doll", not with "bowl." Get it right next time, you mannerless philistine, before one of us decides to kick your useless Yankee booty back to Mass.!
Tune in and talk sports with "The Tony Basilio Show" each weekday from 3-6 p.m. on the network (670 WMTY-AM, 850 WKVL-AM, 1140 WLOD-AM, 1290 WATO-AM, or 1400 WGAP-AM).
November 27, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 48
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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