GLENDALE, Ariz. | You don&#8217;t often hear a college basketball coach use the words &#8220;I would have slit my wrists&#8221; in a press-conference setting. But nobody ever said that Memphis&#8217; John Calipari is like other college basketball coaches. He has always triggered the rawest of emotions in people.</p><p>Temple coach John Chaney in 1994: &#8220;I&#8217;ll kill you. You remember that.&#8221;</p><p>Former player Jayson Williams: &#8220;When Cal goes to church and dips his hand in the holy water, watch out, because it starts to bubble.&#8221;</p><p>Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl to the Memphis <em>Commercial Appeal</em> about why he wants to keep the rivalry with Memphis going: &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to deny the fans in Knoxville the opportunity to see one of the greatest coaches who ever has ever coached the game in John Calipari.&#8221;</p><p>Yes, like that. Funny, Pearl&#8217;s voice dripped with sarcasm, and Chaney meant his words precisely. But they were really saying the same thing about Calipari.</p><p>Tonight, Missouri and Memphis play a Sweet 16 basketball game that should overflow with emotion and rough defense and tension. &#8220;A war,&#8221; Calipari predicts, and there is little doubt that many people around America will root for Calipari to lose the war. He just does that to people.</p><p>Why? Well, that part&#8217;s hard to explain. Yes, there are a few public incidents you can point to &#8230; there was the time he called a reporter a &#8220;bleeping Mexican idiot,&#8221; because the reporter dared give him a D in a midseason report card. There was the time the NCAA made Massachusetts vacate its 1996 Final Four appearance &#8212; Calipari coached that team &#8212; because star Marcus Camby had been paid by an agent. There were the many, many times that people felt like he went way over the edge in the way he went after officials. And so on.</p><p>But the public incidents do not add up to the general disdain that so many seem to feel about Calipari. There&#8217;s something about the way he looks. He can&#8217;t help himself. Cal is America&#8217;s college basketball bad guy. I suspect many people across the nation knock Memphis out of their March Madness brackets early simply because they want John Calipari out.</p><p>And I&#8217;m not the only one who suspects that.</p><p>&#8220;Each round we go, more and more people pick us to lose,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Sometimes I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s their opinion or their hope.&#8221;</p><p>He knows. It&#8217;s their hope. John Calipari just sets people off.</p><p>And the funny thing is, it did not have to be that way. Calipari, in many ways, is the ultimate college basketball success story. He did not come from much. He was a Division II college player whose first coaching job was as a volunteer assistant at Kansas. He talked his way into that job. Nobody, not even his biggest enemies, would deny Calipari&#8217;s ability to talk, and then he worked his way up as an assistant. He paid dues. He slept on couches. He outworked people. He got his &#8220;break&#8221; at 29 when he was chosen to be the coach at Massachusetts, a school that had not managed even a winning record in a decade.</p><p>In four years, the Minutemen won 30 games and reached the Sweet 16. UMass went to the NCAA Tournament five straight years, reached the soon-to-be-vacated Final Four, and Calipari became the very rich head coach of the New Jersey Nets. After turbulent NBA years, he took the job at Memphis and has made the Tigers one of the most successful programs in America.</p><p>So, from one angle, he seems to have everything. He&#8217;s charming, he&#8217;s engaging, he&#8217;s a brilliant coach (his dribble, drive, motion offense is the rage of college basketball). And, beyond that, he is good copy. He can be brutally frank in a fascinating way. The &#8220;slit my wrists&#8221; comment was built around Calipari&#8217;s very public admission that he personally cost his Memphis Tigers the national championship last year with the way he coached the final minutes against Kansas. He should have called a timeout. He should have had his players foul. He should have &#8230; should have &#8230; should have &#8230;