A new book, “Varsity Green,” by Mark Yost, suggests that high-paid college coaches like John Calipari are well worth their multimillion-dollar salaries.
The book examines, among others, former Cincinnati coach (and Memphis arch rival) Bob Huggins. And the chapter titled “The NCAA: Cartel or Mafia?” should be irresistible to Tiger fans. A sample: “The NCAA’s front business is amateurism” but its real business is “extortion.”
“Bob Huggins is, himself, a national brand. And in many ways he made us a national brand too,” says Bob Cavello, athletic director for business development at K-State, where Huggins coached for one year after leaving Cincinnati.
The University of Memphis gets fragged by Yost in the Huggins chapter: “Historically, K-State has been one of the leading public institutions in production of Marshall, Truman, and Rhodes scholars. In short, K-State was no Kentucky or Memphis, where basketball ranks first ahead of everything else, and bio lab is a distant third or fourth on the college president’s list of top priorities.”
