Since John Calipari stunned the college basketball world earlier this week, deciding to bolt from the University of Kentucky after fifteen seasons to become the head coach for the University of Arkansas basketball program, details have begun to trickle out about the increasingly volatile relationship between Calipari and his former employer. And even though Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart claimed after the Wildcats' NCAA Tournament exit that there were no issues between himself, the program and Calipari, it turns out that this increasingly volatile relationship had been deteriorating for years behind the scenes. In fact, it had been so bad that to this day, Coach Cal reportedly has regrets about not leaving Lexington earlier.
“Sources close to Calipari say he still regrets turning down the UCLA job in 2019,” writes Shams Charania and Kyle Tucker of The Athletic. “That was the time to bolt, he now admits privately. But Kentucky ponied up a 10-year, $86 million contract to keep him in Lexington, and the Bruins couldn’t match.”
What if John Calipari had decided to leave the University of Kentucky for the UCLA Bruins ahead of the 2019 season is an absolutely riveting what if for all college hoops fans out there, and it's one that would've impacted at least five different programs.
Coach Cal in SoCal?
For a moment, let's imagine that John Calipari had actually accepted the offer from UCLA in 2019. That means, at minimum, the trajectories of both UCLA and Kentucky would've been greatly altered. But the ripple effects of a move of this magnitude does not stop with the two schools that were directly involved. The University of Cincinnati goes in a different direction in this scenario as well, since their head coach Mick Cronin wouldn't have departed in 2019 for the UCLA job. Before leaving for Los Angeles, Cronin had turned the Cincinnati Bearcats basketball program into one of the most consistent in the country throughout the previous decade. Since Cronin's departure, Cincinnati hasn't made an NCAA Tournament. In Cronin's previous nine years at Cincinnati, the Bearcats made the tournament every single season.
Eventually, a bigger name program would've come calling for Mick Cronin and Cronin likely would've left Cincinnati anyway. That's a fourth program impacted in this Butterfly Effect scenario. Who knows, maybe if Cal would've left Kentucky in 2019, it would've been the Wildcats who swept in and hired Mick Cronin. But as things stand right now, we have no idea who would've gotten the job at Kentucky, but understanding the prestige of that particular program, you have to imagine they would've went big game hunting. That leaves Arkansas, who is only in this position because of Eric Musselman's departure for the head coaching job, as the fifth team impacted, because one would assume had Calipari left Kentucky for UCLA in 2019, he wouldn't necessarily be in the position to leave UCLA for the opening at Arkansas.
Instead, Cal stayed put at Kentucky, and over the previous five years as the college hoops landscape has changed drastically, the relationship between Calipari and the University of Kentucky worsened. Per Charania and Tucker, one of the big sticking points with Calipari was that he felt there was an unwillingness in Lexington to adapt to the new era of college basketball.
“The other thing to change is figuring out our roster, and you have to go in now and have NIL ready, which the school will do. I don’t have to go out and do it anymore. I had to at Kentucky,” Calipari said after being hired by Arkansas. “Here, we’re putting a team together now. Since I’ve had to coach a new team every year, that doesn’t bother me, but they have got to be good kids. If they’re only about themselves, we won’t recruit them, they won’t be here.”
Additionally, the story in The Athletic states that, “The new partnership will include an NIL fund worth ‘at least' $5-7 million, one industry source said, with Arkansas officials expressing no limit to the depths of their pocketbooks for Calipari’s NIL needs.”
In the end, this could be a win for nearly all of programs involved. Mick Cronin has already taken UCLA to a Final Four. Cincinnati is now in the Big 12. Arkansas has one of the most iconic head coaches in the history of college basketball leading their program. And Kentucky gets to start fresh after a successful, yet occasionally disappointing fifteen seasons with Coach Cal.
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