N: Something people use against you a lot are the vacated Final Fours. One thing we wondered, how do the players who were on those teams feel about that designation?
CALIPARI: I wouldn’t be surprised if the Memphis kids come back and sue the NCAA. Those guys are saying, “We earned those wins. ... None of us knew anything about anything, Coach. That’s wrong. Why are they punishing me and the number of wins I had?” Like, Antonio Anderson and Robert Dozier had the most wins of anyone over a four-year period, but they take away 38.
They’re not going to be around long. The NCAA will not. Before I retire from coaching, they will no longer oversee college athletics. They will, but it won’t be the four power conferences—they’ll be on their own. And the main thing is, do you really care about these kids? They’ll get mad that I say it. The NCAA Tournament, for example. It’s more about the selection committee getting on TV, everybody getting their tickets on the aisle, down low, all the parties they go to, the traveling. But we don’t take the parents of the participants. But they take their kids and their families.
The officials will get better hotels than some of their teams. And I know it for a fact. The decisions they make on the $2,000 (expense allowance for student-athletes)—it should have been $4,000. It’s a stipend. It’s not salary. It’s not “pay-for-play.” It’s a stipend. It’s expenses. And then schools vote against it. All this stuff piles up to where people are going to say, “Enough’s enough.”