(above, Calipari shown during his tenure at the University Of Massachusetts)
University Of Kentucky head coach John Calipari shrugged off Bobby Knight’s recent criticism to lead the Wildcats to a lopsided beating of Drexel tonight, the program’s 2000th all-time victory. A day before reaching said historic mark, Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones claimed ESPN scribe/TV yapper Jemele Hill was called on the carpet by her employers after comparing Coach Cal to a former Dennis Wilson collaborator.
Hill was forced to apologize to UK on Friday after she took a shot at Calipari and the UK fanbase on the awful show ESPN œFirst Take. On the show, Jemele Hill said (and I am paraphrasing) that UK fans would be fine with œCharles Manson as coach, so long as he won. Not surprisingly, the powers that be at UK were upset with the comment and the two or three fans that actually watch that show were outraged as well.
That set the ball rolling and according to the sources, ESPN forced Hill to call Mitch Barnhart and the SEC office in order to apologize. Coming on the heels of the problems with Pat Forde and the infamous Bobby Knight comments, Hill was forced to attempt to salvage a relationship (that of ESPN and UK) that has been deteriorating over the last couple of months. According to the sources, Hill called Barnhart and actually said very little, instead listening to an irate Kentucky Athletic Director go into detail as to his problems with her comments and that of other ESPN personalities in general. She was then forced to call the SEC office and apologize (or as another source put it œexplain) the comments to them as well.