The University of Memphis is a stinker of a sports factory with a venerable history of violations and voided seasons. Mafia-style basketball coach John Calipari brought his special approach to coaching to UM a few years ago (he’s now at Kentucky) and got them wins and voided wins in time-honored fashion and fine. We all know the deal and who cares about the voided part? We still won. We won the way you win in big-time university sports: Hired an incredibly expensive cheater (“Cal probably doesn’t have to cheat now as much as he used to, but he’s still the standard. The rest of us can’t even deal in his league. He’s the best.”) who cheated us there. So?

Oh but now some moral purists at UM are balking at honoring Calipari at a campus event as he’s inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame because oh no he was a cheater and because of him we had to void our wins.

Listen up.

[F]ans are mad… because Calipari left in the midst of an NCAA investigation into Derrick Rose’s eligibility, which eventually voided the 2007-08 season and the Tigers’ Final Four appearance. This is rich, because they sure didn’t seem to have a problem with Calipari’s methods when his teams were marching deep into the tournament every year, even though his previous Final Four appearance with UMass was also voided because Marcus Camby accepted money and gifts. They also think he stole Xavier Henry, who had signed a letter-of-intent, and DeMarcus Cousins, who had verbally committed, away from Memphis as he left, as if those players should’ve been forced to attend Memphis after the coach that recruited them left.

John Calipari is a good basketball coach and a great recruiter, and in some ways his open recruitment of one-and-dones and promise to get them ready for the NBA is the most honest arrangement in college basketball. Sure, he almost certainly looks the other way as his players and programs commit NCAA violations, but it’s not as if Memphis didn’t know that when they hired him, and it’s hardly as if he’s the only college basketball coach doing so.

Or put it like this:

[Memphis fans are upset because] Calipari’s 2008 Final Four run with Memphis was vacated by the NCAA after star player Derrick Rose was found to have cheated on his SAT. (Even though Calipari himself was never found at fault — and even though rule-breaking and rule-bending is ingrained in the culture of supposedly “amateur” college basketball.)