"UMass’ 1996 Final Four season was vacated because Marcus Camby took money from an agent. Calipari was not named in the investigation and not named in the findings. And with such a low burden of proof (i.e., none) for the NCAA to satisfy, the NCAA would have named him if they could have.
In this latest case, Calipari was not named in the allegations or in the findings. Call me old-fashioned, but when I imply that a coach was masterminding academic fraud and conspiring with accounting staff to undercharge for charter flight services, I require credible proof. There is none. And when there is no proof, I try not to use coded terms like “plausible deniability” to call a guy a cheater."
I can accept the idea that Calipari did not know about Camby taking money, assuming that there were no obvious signs that he was doing so. That is no different from Maguette at Duke. Unless anyone has information that Camby was spending way beyond his means at UMass, I would not blame Calipari for Camby's actions.
Nevertheless, the credible proof idea at Memphis is a bit hard to swallow. There is a reason why in these cases people ask, "Did he know or should he have known?" When SAT scores go up as if by magic, especially by a player who has taken the exam repeatedly and for some unexplained reason goes to another city to take the test, my dog would realize immediately that the results were bogus. Unfortunately, by definition the plausible deniability excuse only works when it's plausible.