The return of Coach K. Er, Coach C

 The University of Kentucky is bringing back John Calipari for another crack at losing to Whatsamatta U. in next year's NCAA Tournament, and that must frost the cookies of every Wildcat fan from Harrodsburg to Hunters Hollow.

You lose to St. Peter's and Oakland in two of the last three years, and fail to make much of a splash in a whole lot of other years stretching back a decade or so, the true believers start hauling out the torches and pitchforks. Welcome to Wildcat Country -- or Hoosier Country, or Tar Heel Country, or Jayhawk Country, or any other Country whose beating heart is a basketball thump-thumping hardwood.

Know what, though?

Over at the Lexington Herald-Leader -- UK's hometown paper -- they're probably rejoicing. That's because they'll get another crack at spelling Calipari's name right.

Maybe you missed it, maybe you didn't, but the Herald-Leader published a big ol' front page story about Calipari's buyout the other day. Problem was, the H-L spelled his name "Kalipari" in the headline.

Now, you'd think when a guy's been around for 16 years and won you some national titles, "Calipari" would be the ONE name you would never get wrong. But there was "Kalipari' in great big bold type, christening Coach Cal the new Coach K or some such thing.

And the best part?

In the cutline of the photo above the story, "Calipari" is actually spelled correctly.

Now, I could go on a rant here about how this is what happens when you whittle your newsroom down to skeletons and outsource your copy editing to Kalamazoo or wherever, but I've already ranted about that ad nauseum. Suffice it to say print journalism has gone the way of the dinosaur, and all that's left are hedge fund vultures picking over the carrion for every last scrap.

Journalism? Serving what once was regarded as the noble purpose of keeping the local community informed and enlightened?

Pffft. How 1970s.

Anyway, all that leads to "Kalipari", which is hilarious until you consider the boots still  on the ground at the H-L likely were the only ones mortified by it. The parent company prolly is too busy counting its cash to notice.

Quick story.

Way back in the early 1980s (or late 1970s, I can't remember exactly which), when the Blob was still a puppy sportswriter occasionally peeing on the carpet, the paper for which I worked, the Anderson Daily Bulletin, ran a story about the death of a local high school athletic director. Esteemed sports editor Mike Chappell wrote the story, and quoted a school official as saying "We've lost a dear friend." Great quote, and so we used it as the headline for the story.

Except.

Except the headline came out reading "We've Lost A Dead Friend."

The journalism gods were benevolent that day, however. Because for some reason I was wandering around the backshop where they were pasting up the pages (yes, boys and girls, newspaper pages were physically pasted up in those long-ago days), and I caught the error. Or maybe it was Mike, I can't exactly recall.

At any rate, a new, corrected headline was rolled out. And the readers were none the wiser.

But you know what?

At least that never happened when we were writing about Bob Night. 

I mean, "Knight."