Perfect but not the best? Why UK's John Calipari was not named National Coach of the Year

The United States Basketball Writers Association named Virginia's Tony Bennett the National Coach of the Year on Monday.

This is some lousy timing because Virginia was somewhat-handily eliminated from the NCAA tournament by Michigan State on Sunday. The award isn't supposed to be about one game, even one in the NCAA tournament, but it begs a few simple questions:

What about John Calipari, you know, the coach of the 36-0 Kentucky Wildcats, odds-on favorite to win the national title and complete the first perfect season in nearly 40 years?

Individual honors always feel like some kind of nod to history. Kentucky hasn't made it yet – next up: West Virginia in the Sweet 16 on Thursday. However, if the Wildcats win out, can we really have a 40-0 national title team and not have its coach be the Coach of the Year?

Then there are procedural issues, such as why vote before the NCAA tournament is over, not to mention what exactly are the criteria for voting in the first place?

First off, Tony Bennett did a terrific job this season. The Cavaliers finished 30-4 and won the ACC regular-season title. So, congratulations.

This isn't about him or the work he put in.

It's about these kinds of awards.

Among Kentucky fans, the choice of Bennett over Calipari is seen as further proof that the media hates their coach, a concept that Calipari isn't opposed to pumping up. It is undoubtedly possible that some media did not choose Calipari out of personal animus or suspicions over past run-ins with the NCAA enforcement process. Who knows?

That isn't necessarily the issue here, though.

The USBWA probably won't be the only group to name someone other than Calipari as its national coach of the year. It's more than the sportswriters, which is why blaming it all on media bias is shortsighted.

On a personal side note: I never vote for any award, honor, Hall of Fame or anything else and believe no one in the media should. It's one thing to express a personal opinion on who deserves something, it's another to actively participate in the process or hold some role in an official distinction.

Especially when the official process is almost always a mess.

Consider the last college basketball team to put together a perfect season, the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers, who finished 32-0. Their coach, Bob Knight, didn't win the USBWA award in that year; Michigan's Johnny Orr did. How? Good question. Michigan went 25-7, didn't crack the top 10 until the final poll and lost three times to the Hoosiers. Was a fourth necessary?

The main culprit appears to be the timing of the vote … after the regular season but before the NCAAs. At that point no one knew Indiana would actually finish with a perfect record – let alone that it wouldn't be done again for 39 years and counting.

Plus, the USBWA had just given the honor to Knight the season prior, when his team put together a 29-0 regular season only to lose to Kentucky in the NCAA regional final and finish 31-1. So it may have been a case of been there, done that.

Of course, Knight did win the award for his first perfect regular season. As did Wichita State's Gregg Marshall last year and St. Joseph's Phil Martelli for the Hawks' unbeaten 2003-04 season.

Calipari did not.

This leads to the strange belief that the coach who did the best job is the one who exceeded preseason expectations.

Of course, "expectations" are subjective and could very well be based just as much on inaccurate preseason prognostications than actually exceeding reality. Who is to say a team was only good because of the coach? Maybe the players were just better than anyone thought. Since when did the Athlon guide matter?

The expectation game dominates coach of the year voting, though, at almost every level of every sport.

Consider Big Ten football, where no Ohio State coach since Earl Bruce in 1979 has been named league coach of the year.

Jim Tressel won at least a share of the Big Ten seven times in 10 seasons and never got it. And it's difficult to imagine how anyone could coach better than Urban Meyer did last year. The award went to Minnesota's Jerry Kill.

And therein lies the chief issue for Calipari and others like him. His roster is loaded with talent.

This, too, is ridiculous. When is recruiting not part of the job for a college coach? Has any athletic director ever hired a guy and said they don't care if the person recruits good players, they just want to see nice X's and O's drawn up on the white board?

Recruiting is the lifeblood of college sports, essential to the task. It is nonsensical when determining who did a job best to not just ignore what is at least one half of said job, but to actually penalize someone for being great at that half.

You know who else from this era has never won the USBWA Coach of the Year award: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Billy Donovan and believe it or not … Mike Krzyzewski.

All of them were apparently too good at recruiting. Or just meeting expectations.

Like the aforementioned, Calipari has done more than recruit anyway. His team of stars has played as an unselfish unit – eight different leading scorers, statistically one of the best defensive teams in history, etc.

Shouldn't there be an appreciation for coaching players who have the natural interest in maximizing their own play rather than the team because millions of dollars of NBA money is riding on it. That's a unique challenge not faced by a coach of a team with less-talented players.

Or did Coach K win those 1,000 games and four national titles by just rolling the ball out.

The debate whether Calipari is a great coach or not will go on for a long time with neither side likely to cede its position. Not even 40-0 will change many minds.

What's undeniable is that the process for picking these awards remains flawed. If having a team win every single game, often by a huge margin, isn't enough, then what did John Calipari have to do?

Here's guessing, like Urban Meyer, he'll gladly take this year's national title as a consolation prize.