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Calipari Goes to Kentucky

It just wasn't Rick Pitino's week. First, his Louisville Cardinals picked the most inopportune time to throw their most uninspired game of the year, against Michigan State in the Elite Eight, and lost a chance at the Final Four and his first national championship at Louisville. Then, his old job down the road comes open and instead of listening to him and hiring one of his old players and Kentucky family members like Travis Ford of Oklahoma State or John Pelphrey of Arkansas, Mitch Barnhardt does the unexpected and hires Pitino nemesis John Calipari. Just for the icing on the cake, Kentucky decides to pay him more than Pitino is making too. I imagine that Tom Jurich's (Louisville AD) phone is already ringing. In fact, Calipari will become the highest paid coach in college basketball with an 8 year, $31.65 million contract, that includes a $2.5 million signing bonus and a $200,000 buyout to Memphis.

So, just why would Kentucky hire Calipari and is this a marrigae that could work? This hire may be the perfect mating of university and coach. Calipari is a slicked back, hyper aggressive, workaholic, boundary stretching, limit bending and maybe crossing coach, who will do damn near anything to land a recruit and once on campus, keep him eligible to play. Kentucky is a university that will do anything, pay any price - literally and figuratively - to land a winning team and keep it eligible as long as the ultimate prize is reached at suitable intervals. The Wildcat fan base doesn't care too much for SEC titles, they expect those. The prize that they care about are Final Four appearances and regular national championships - anything less is failure and not tolerated, no matter if your name is Adolph Rupp.

Whether Calipari is really as dirty as his whispered reputation is open to question. His long association with William Wesley certainly doesn't help. However, the Kentucky fans don't care and the administration doesn't care as long as any NCAA penalties are relatively mild and not financially significant. If Calipari wins, puts fans in their seats, games on TV and donors reaching for their checkbooks, he can do pretty much any damn thing he wants - especially if he beats Rick Pitino and Louisville on a regular basis.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on April 01, 2009 (boomark / email).