KNOTT: By any other name, Rose scandal will fade

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By Tom Knott

The urge to lament Derrick Rose's fraudulent academic career is an understandable but wasted exercise.

No genuine reform is coming to big-time college athletics, no matter how many scandals surface. Too many prosper off the student-athlete sham.

If a dead body and attempted cover-up in Waco, Texas, could not jar the NCAA suits into action, academic malfeasance is not about to raise a concern.

It soon will pass, the Rose fallout. The scandal of the moment inevitably recedes from the public domain, the outrage subsides and then it is back to business as usual.

Go, Memphis.

John Calipari has skipped town, of course. His recruitment of Rose helped result in his eight-year, $32.1 million deal at Kentucky, where he is expected to restore the luster of the basketball program. No one is expected to be overly concerned with how he goes about it.

The blue-bleeding fanatics of Kentucky do not judge their athletic saviors on how they secure personnel but on their number of wins. Calipari will win at Kentucky, if not lead the Wildcats to the Final Four, even if the appearance eventually is vacated.

That is part of Calipari's legacy. He took UMass to the Final Four in 1996, only to have it vacated. The same prospect awaits Memphis' appearance in the Final Four in 2008.

None of the stench sticks to Calipari, who inevitably professes to be ignorant of the wrongdoing around him. And maybe he is. But if you recruit enough suspects, as Calipari does, no one should be surprised if a few of them eventually bring shame and scandal to a school.

It is easy enough to ridicule David Stern's decision that ended the prep-to-NBA migration. Rose never would have needed a grading curve and a stand-in to take his SAT if the option of the NBA had been available to him after high school, as it once was.