A Jersey Guy: Coach Cal has come along way

It was almost 30 years ago and John Calipari was a coach with big ambitions at the University of Massachusetts.

  His first job--as the Minutemen basketball coach--paid him 63,000 a year, but...he was also a 'state emplpoyee''

"What is this,'' said Coach Cal, going through his mail one day in his office as we sat and talked. "What the  bleep. Look at this.''

As a "state employee' Coach Cal had been scheduled for an UNPAID furlough of a week.

I make note of this, because  Coach Cal generated some headlines last week by winning his 400th career game at Kentuckiy.

This on a resume which includes stops at UMass (73 percent wins), Memphis (78 percent) and now 15 years at Kentucky, where he has won 78 percent of his games.

All for a tidy salary of more than $8 million a year.

Coach Cal is ther only active coach witih more than 800 careeer victories

***

The University of Iowa paid a search firm $125,000 to find a new athletic director and then made an internal hire when it lifted the interim tag off of AD Beth Goetz....Really?

***

Is Michigan coach Juwan Howard really on the hot seat. Flirting with its first losing season in 14  years, the Wolverines are indeed struggling, enduring their longest losing streak (5) in nine seasons and sitting in the lower depths of the Big 10.

.