Calipari flips conversation in dramatic way
As home run hitters go, at least in the realm of celebrity coaching hires, John Calipari is Shohei Ohtani, if not George Herman Ruth.
News that the Kentucky men’s head basketball coach might come to Arkansas frankly jolted the senses. That it happened on the 50th anniversary of Henry Louis Aaron passing Ruth as Major League Baseball’s sultan of swat is a footnote. On Monday, coinciding with a solar eclipse, it was no worse than the second-biggest story in our state.
On a personal note, this is what comes by not suspending disbelief in the new world order of college athletics. And not watching ESPN or local stations Sunday night for breaking news about the University of Arkansas’ job search.
A few things come to mind when digesting reports that the leader of Big Blue Nation might coach the Red Team:
* Calipari must really want out of Kentucky. Fifteen years and an NCAA championship in Lexington should secure him a place on Mount Olympus of Kentucky basketball with Adolph Rupp, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and, yes, Joe B. Hall — championship winners all — as keepers of that flame.
This is too crazy to contemplate, but Calipari might be remembered, like Lane Kiffin with Tennessee football, as someone who left in the middle of the night. Twelve years since beating Kansas on a Monday night in April for UK’s eighth national title amounts to a dark age in the Bluegrass State. “What have you done for us lately?” increasingly flooded talk radio and newspaper columns in horse country.
Kentucky, make no mistake, is a plum in college basketball. It was thus so when an Arkansas coach, Eddie Sutton, with an unfortunate choice of words, said in 1985 he would “crawl all the way to Lexington” to succeed Hall on the UK bench. Sutton (since deceased) frankly shamed the program with misdeeds, one involving one of his sons. It took Pitino, an easterner, to repair the damage.
That Calipari, another from the Interstate 95 corridor, has been on the outs with Kentucky school officials is old news. If anything, for Calipari to switch jobs shines more light on Wildcat football coach Mike Stoops, who did not kneel at the foot of that cross. Calipari remains a taboo subject in Memphis, which he took to the 2008 NCAA final (losing to Kansas), with lots of gray areas on his resume.
* Calipari becomes the alpha dog of Arkansas athletics, let no one doubt it. For Hunter Yurachek, Arkansas’ AD, hiring a high-maintenance coach for men’s basketball raises the bar in all ways while taking the glare off football and the recent decline in Eric Musselman’s hoops program. In case football’s “Bobby Petrino: the sequel” is another “Heaven’s Gate” production, Yurachek has established himself as well, a big-game hunter in college sports.
Arkansas goes from Lyle Lovett on bended knee to Julia Roberts to Brad Pitt whispering sweet nothings in the ear of Angelina Jolie. Come to think of it, Kentucky celebrity fan Ashley Judd may transfer loyalties, or not. As the fellow who peddles a certain brand of country sausage on TV might say, “This is gooodddd.”
* Steve Arrison gets another grand marshal for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Bridge Street in Hot Springs.
* An Arkansas sports writer thinking of retirement, or adjusting to such, must be saying, like Michael Corleone, “Just when I thought I was
out, they pull me back in.”
* Columnists Rick Bozich and John Clay, longtime chroniclers of Kentucky basketball, receive a fresh storyline.
* Someone please arrange an Arkansas-USC matchup (Calipari vs. Musselman) and, by all means, a series with Memphis (Calipari vs. Penny Hardaway). Think either game would fill Bud Walton Arena?
* Cal, at 65, is nearing retirement age but who in a position of power at Arkansas is not (Sam Pittman and Petrino are 62)? When one’s athletic program, especially the money sports, are crashing, one takes desperate measures.
On Monday, at least, this gave us something to talk about other than the solar eclipse.
No immediate word if the Commonwealth of Kentucky, like Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared in Arkansas, was in a state of emergency.