It may not be against the rules, but it’s wrong to let Mark Stoops hire his brother

It was wrong when President John F. Kennedy Jr. did it.

It was wrong when President Donald Trump did it. And New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

It was wrong when UK men’s basketball coach John Calipari did it. And it’s wrong now that UK football Coach Mark Stoops has announced he’s hiring his brother, Mike, as UK’s new linebacker coach for no doubt a six figure salary.

It may not be against the rules but it’s always wrong when people at public institutions or in positions of public trust hire their close relatives. How do we know? Well, it’s against the rules at the University of Kentucky, but not at the University of Kentucky Athletics (which gives you some idea why it looks more like a professional sports franchise than a college sports department).

It’s inherently corrupt to hire your relatives, which is why it was such a big reform when nepotism hiring was outlawed as part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in public schools in 1990. It’s corrupt because there’s no way to believe that you’ve hired the most qualified person or that they will be held to the same levels of accountability as everyone else.

It’s also corrosive: Brad Calipari, who played for his dad and now works for him, will always wonder if it was his natural talent as either a player or a coach that gave him a career in basketball, or was it his dad propelling him to the front of the line for one of the most coveted spots in college sports?

Now I understand that if you own your own business, whether it’s a hardware store or the New York Times, it’s natural to want to hire your family and keep them there over the generations. But neither the U.S. presidency nor UK Athletics is a family business. They are both taxpayer funded public trusts.

And yes, everyone in sports — from college teams to professional ones — does it. But normalizing nepotism at a public educational institution is deeply, morally wrong and it sends the wrong message to the public at large, and more importantly, the students who are there to be educated.