After 15 seasons, an NCAA championship, and three additional Final Four appearances with Kentucky, coach John Calipari has made the decision to leave the organization in favor of becoming the new coach at Arkansas.
Calipari has allegedly agreed to a five-year deal with Arkansas for $38.5 million. There has also been talk of stipulations attached that could boost the deal to seven years for close to $60 million.
Sources have said that after Arkansas initiated negotiations with Calipari, Kentucky made no attempt to make a counteroffer.
“I’ve done this a few times in my career, and the biggest thing I’m trying to create is the love affair between this program and the campus,” Calipari said to people from The Athletic. “This program, Northwest Arkansas, this whole state, you’re trying to create a love affair. That means the kind of kids we’re recruiting, great kids that want to be involved in the community. That means as the coach, don’t cheat the position and stay inside and just watch tape. Be involved in charities, be involved in helping throughout the campus, the state… The other thing to change is figuring out the 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. 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 to be good kids. If they’re only about themselves, we won’t recruit them, they won’t be here… What keeps me going is chasing championships and putting my team in the best position at the end of the year to make a run. Let’s go do this and do it together.”
Sources say that Calipari has expressed regret about not leaving Kentucky earlier, saying that he wishes he had accepted the offer from UCLA back in 2019, but the amount Kentucky was willing to pay him to stay had convinced him otherwise.
It has been said that Calipari’s relationship with UK’s athletic director, Mitch Barnhart, had soured in recent years. Things reached a boiling point back in 2022 with Calipari’s inflammatory words, “This is a basketball school.” He said this in reference to his displeasure at Kentucky’s reluctance to invest in a new practice facility for the team, spending their money on some of their other teams instead.
Obviously, Kentucky’s football coach wasn’t too pleased to hear this mentality from Calipari, nor was Barnhart.
“We’ll make sure we’re not entitled,” Barnhart said in a press conference immediately after the statement from Calipari. “If that’s not good enough, you know, coaches change a lot in today’s world.”
Sure enough, two years later, Calipari officially left his long-time home to pursue a new legacy with Arkansas.
“Kentucky’s not an on-and-off switch job,” Rick Barnes, the coach of Tennessee, said about Calipari. “What the Kentucky coach and what Kentucky basketball means there… John filled those shoes in a way that I promise you this: one day, Kentucky is going to look back and say that we need a John Calipari banner up there.”
