LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – It's 2 a.m., and there's nobody up but us (Tyson) chickens. Reports that Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is negotiating a deal to become the next coach at Arkansas appear to be real, and they are spectacular.
Perhaps this is overly dramatic, but quitting the Kentucky job is not terribly unlike relinquishing the Papacy.
You better have a hell of a reason.
Yet Calipari, according to ESPN and others, is completing a deal to leave the Roman Empire of college basketball for exile in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Somebody tell Alan Cutler to lace up his Hokas. By all accounts, it's go time.
Woo pig really?
Nah, could never happen, right? You’re more likely to see the sun blotted out in the middle of a Monday afternoon than see Kentucky’s Caesar trade in his thoroughbred-drawn chariot for a Tyson Chicken private jet. Oh, wait.
Friends, Romans, Kentuckians, lend me your ears. We come to bury Calipari, and to praise him. The championships that coaches win live after them. The draft picks are often interred with their pages in the media guides.
Just a month ago, Calipari was at the helm of one of the hottest teams in America. It had smoked an Alabama team that would wind up in the Final Four. It had beaten SEC Champion Tennessee on the road. It blew out Auburn at Auburn. It was comprised of a group of players more beloved than any in recent Kentucky memory, led by national freshman of the year, Reed Sheppard, a Kentucky native.
But who knew the power in Oakland super senior Jack Gohlke’s three-point daggers?
A year ago, Gohlke wrote an e-mail to Bellarmine inquiring about a transfer from Hillsdale College in Michigan. He was told the school wasn’t interested in one-year transfers. He wound up at Oakland. And he, it turned out, wielded the knife, cutting Kentucky down in a first-round NCAA Tournament victory that sent the Wildcats home winless in the tournament for the second time in three years.
Et tu, Golke?
What happened after that was a subject of some speculation. It was said that Calipari and Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart met to discuss changes in the program, after which no changes in the program were made. The two men then made an appearance together on a Lexington television station. Their comments fooled no one, but did produce some of the most awkward television since Michael Scott kissed Oscar Nunez.
It's a tale as old as time. Two parties, drifting apart, yet bound by a $33 million buyout clause. Oh, and the kids.
There were so many of them. Calipari produced 35 first-round draft picks at Kentucky, with more to come. For those of you scoring at home – and all true Kentucky fans score at home -- that’s 35 first-round draft picks moving left to right on your radio dial, and one NCAA championship.
Kentucky may rank only 39th in the National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores, but even we know those numbers don’t add up.
Stands to reason that Calipari might find a state that ranks even lower in which to try to sell that formula. (How do you like them apples, No. 43 Arkansas?)
But the fault, dear Gohlke, lies not in his stars, but in himself.
It wasn’t enough for Calipari to recruit wonderful players to Lexington. He needed to parade them into and out of town. He needed to fan the flame of Calipari, the blue chip whisperer. He called NBA Draft Day the biggest day of the year for Kentucky’s program.
And as long as you’re not losing to Saint Peter’s, you can get by with a certain amount of that. But you know what they say -- it’s all fun and games until you start getting drilled in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
Your number of first-round draft picks is inversely relevant to the number of mid-major transfers taking Alabama to the Final Four, or helping Connecticut close in on your number of NCAA titles.
So Calipari, faced with a changing college basketball reality, a nine-year Final Four drought and a grumbling fan base, may well have had his finger on the ejector switch.
He wouldn’t be the first. Tubby Smith, in the midst of his own nine-year Final Four drought in 2007, heard some of the same grumbling, and he wound up taking the train to Minnesota.
Despite the history repeating itself, this remains a blockbuster turn for Calipari, a coach with great power and a lifetime contract.
While he may have chosen the same route that Smith chose, he is not Tubby Smith. More than Smith, Calipari was made to coach Kentucky. He shined in its status. He reveled in its royalty. With a simple turn of phrase he could send the fan base in any direction his marketing mind desired. He was a comfortable ringmaster.
Whoever follows him will have his work cut out for him.
Calipari raised millions for charity in Kentucky, responding to natural disasters and mobilizing Kentucky’s legions of fans for good.
He's a good man who restored Kentucky’s name to the blue-blood status it had always held, but lately had trouble maintaining it in a changing landscape. For his entire Kentucky tenure, his strategy has been to get the best freshmen in the country and hope for the best. Usually, that put Kentucky among the best. Until it didn’t.
So here we are, stress eating in the middle of the night and slow-walking this column to a conclusion, half-expecting Calipari to pop out of the Twitter speculation like some kind of well-dressed boogeyman to tell the sports media elites breaking this story that they’re full of it. Any minute now, I expect Matt Jones to announce that Cal has buried the hatchet and will do an hour on Kentucky Sports Radio in the morning, explaining to all the "Basketball Bennies" why they don't know anything about anything.
No. You don’t go this far down the road with Arkansas, you don’t allow this kind of speculation, and then come back. The lifeline, according to ESPN's Pete Thamel and Jeff Borzello, came courtesy of billionaire John H. Tyson, chicken magnate, longtime Arkansas donor and a longtime Calipari friend.
It seems that Calipari saw an exit route and got the cluck out.
The “Be Careful What You Wish For” Express has all but left the station, driving a 911 about a hundred and seven down a back road with a load of prized recruits and a handful of returning players, no doubt, in tow. I'd only caution that if the football offensive coordinator offers you a ride, politely decline.
There will be time to talk about Calipari’s legacy, which might actually burn brighter as a result of this move. But right now, the more compelling story would be his manner of leaving. And his destination. Goodness, he's bizarro Eddie Sutton.
Do they have Dunkin’ Donuts and Malone’s Steakhouses in Fayetteville? No matter. For Calipari, the time may well have come -- to quote Chris Stapleton, a fellow Kentuckian who wields a pen far better than I can -- to get down, get down to Arkansas.
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