John Calipari recently made a shocking career move as he left Kentucky basketball to be the head coach of the Arkansas basketball team. Calipari and the Wildcats have not had a lot of March success in recent years, and a lot of Kentucky fans wanted the program to move on. They decided to keep Calipari after their upset loss in this year's NCAA Tournament, but now, Calipari is going to Arkansas.
A lot of people thought that Kentucky basketball might move on from John Calipari, but after they seemed to reach an agreement on him returning, it was a huge shock to see him make the move over to the Arkansas basketball team. Now, more details are emerging on Calipari's contract with the Razorbacks.
“Calipari has signed a five-year contract to lead the Razorbacks with a salary beginning at $7 million per season,” A tweet from Jeff Borzello said. “The contract runs through April 30th, 2029 with a maximum of two automatic rollover years for NCAA Tournament appearances that would extend the contract to 2031. The deal includes a $1 million signing bonus and features retention bonuses of $500,000 each year of the contract along with one-time bonuses for making the NCAA Tournament, reaching the second round, Sweet 16, Final Four and winning a national championship.”
Making into the NCAA Tournament hasn't been an issue for John Calipari in recent years, but winning games in it has been. It's been awhile since Calipari went to the Final Four as it last happened back in 2015. He has had a lot of good teams at Kentucky in terms of regular season success, but for some reason they haven't been able to put it together in the big dance. It's going to be interesting to see if he can change that with Arkansas basketball.
John Calipari's fifth head coaching gig: Arkansas
In his illustrious career, John Calipari has been the head coach for now five different basketball teams. He has led UMass, the New Jersey Nets, Memphis, Kentucky and now Arkansas. Calipari has had a lot of success as he won a national championship, been to six Final Fours, won six SEC Tournament titles and six SEC regular season titles. We'll see if he can add some more of those with the Razorbacks.
It's going to be interesting to see how Calipari approaches this Arkansas job. He had a lot of resources at Kentucky as the Wildcats have one of the best basketball programs in the country. He got a lot of top talent to come into this recruiting classes, but there were a lot of one-and-dones, and while recruiting like that worked in the past, it hasn't worked as well as of late.
Perhaps John Calipari will start to change his ways now that he is coaching a new team. In this new era of college basketball, you have to be able to adapt and make the necessary changes to keep up with the changing game. This is a crucial time in Calipari's career, and it seems like it is time for him to make some changes to the way he attacks the job.
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