A KENTUCKY FAILURE, JOHN CALIPARI YELLS “WOOO PIG SOOIE” AT ARKANSAS
Unless Jerry Jones supplies NIL money and Bill Clinton befriends him, it’s shocking to see Calipari take his coaching career to Fayetteville, where fans won’t have patience for a has-been at age 65
For a man who grew up in the Pennsylvania township of Moon — this as a solar eclipse brings totality — it must seem odd to take a one-way flight to Fayetteville. Hey, wasn’t John Calipari supposed to win four or five national titles at Kentucky? Wouldn’t he make up for his vacated Final Four appearances at Memphis and Massachusetts?
Or maybe he belongs behind the image of the sun, in the aftermath of a sport that belongs to Dan Hurley, as we’ll see again Monday night.
By now, at 65, Calipari takes a stunning and slight pay cut at Arkansas because he no longer felt welcome in Lexington. Seems his one-and-done approach on launching players to the NBA, after a single season, turned into distressing one-and-dones in the NCAA tournament. Losses to 14-seed Oakland and 15-seed Saint Peter’s helped bury the Wildcats in the first weekend for five years, and that cannot happen at Rupp Arena, where they’ve still won more men’s basketball games than all the rest. Fact is, he celebrated a championship only once for his $8.5 million per year, in 2012, and since segregationalist Adolph Rupp won his fourth title back in 1958, what exactly has the Kentucky religion become?
Folks loved him in the commonwealth when he landed future pro all-stars on his jet plane. Then they hated him when he lost to Jack Gohlke and the Golden Grizzlies last month. Calipari vowed better results, which seemed enough for athletic director Mitch Barnhart. “As we normally do at the end of every season, Coach Calipari and I have had conversations about the direction of our men's basketball program and I can confirm he will return for his 16th season as our head coach," Barnhart wrote on X. The date was March 26, when Calipari appeared on a radio show.
“I talked again about the standard ... that I believe in, that I think we can do,” he said. "But that standard of national titles has been here from Coach Rupp on, and the only thing I'm saying to all our fans is you know I'm going to work — work in our state, work on this program, this university. That's my commitment. I'm not changing, 24/7, let's go — whether it's recruiting, all the stuff that we have to do.”
He’s long gone less than two weeks later. Calipari wasn’t fired, but he felt the need to huddle with John H. Tyson, an Arkansas billionaire and a notable program booster after Eric Musselman departed for USC. Kansas State’s Jerome Tang didn’t want the opening. Chris Beard, with personal problems, also said no and stayed at Ole Miss. Calipari went anyway.
He’s a Razorback, holy hell, and maybe Bill Clinton will befriend him. Jerry Jones and the Walton family would be fine donors.
Locked in a 1-for-26 mess since Tubby Smith’s trophy, Kentucky has regressed behind Alabama, Tennessee and Auburn in the Southeastern Conference. Florida was the last team to win back-to-back national titles, which helps explain why the coach of those Gators champions, Billy Donovan, might be called by the financiers. It would be his perfect out-pattern in Chicago, where he has accomplished little with the Bulls amid the cold bath of the Reinsdorfs. Might he avoid NILs payments and transfer portal blurs and stay in the NBA? Maybe, but he’ll have to say no.
Is Jay Wright ready to return from his commercials and Charles Barkley grins? This might be the place, unless he’s finished with coaching hassles. And if not him — no, Rick Pitino isn’t coming back at 71 — then try the coach of the Crimson Tide, who isn’t in football garb. He introduced himself as Nate Oats, whose screaming on a Saturday evening in Phoenix kept Alabama competitive against Hurley and Connecticut. Is his passion strong enough to make Kentucky pay his $18 million buyout and haul him to a basketball school? If not, there’s Bruce Pearl, who has served an NCAA show-and-cause penalty at Auburn for his violations — but didn’t Kentucky ignore Calipari’s disobedience in 2009?
Life is good for Scott Drew at Baylor, who has a national title and makes the most sense. Life is better for Hurley, who would look down his prominent nose and laugh at the thoroughbreds. By simply staying at Kentucky, Calipari could have carried on while knowing he’d be paid more than $33 million if fired. He prefers to win elsewhere.
“Wooo Pig Sooie!” he can yell. It’s known as the Hog Call. He coached in Amherst. He failed with the Nets. He went to Memphis, then to Kentucky, and now Bud Walton Arena, where a slobbering boar extends from one three-point line to the other. He’d better win, or only Moon will have him back.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.