It seems that John Calipari is not a big fan of gymnastics. Furthermore, forget about envisioning him in a leotard—his Kentucky dismount missed the entire gym in addition to the surface.
The rumors that surfaced on Sunday night about his planned departure for Arkansas moved through several phases of truth. The news, which was startling at first before making sense, sort of lay there on Monday without any confirmation (though it wasn’t without effort, and we’ll get to that).
It’s difficult to avoid drawing comparisons between this entire situation and Nick Saban’s goodbye a few months prior given their similarities. Though Calipari arrived to collapsing empires around the same time, he is seven years younger and not quite ready to retire.
Two years before Calipari reached the wreckage of the Billy Gillispie affair, Saban set foot in Tuscaloosa in 2007. With their aggressive recruitment tactics, they were able to revive their starving fan bases and return them to championship shape in no time.
Calipari earned his first national title at Kentucky, just 84 days after Saban won his third at Alabama—both at the Superdome in New Orleans.
Calipari lacks an agent like to Jimmy Sexton who is in charge of puppetry behind the scenes, unlike Saban. That’s part of the reason you get films like the one from Monday, where Calipari is seen pushing his dog in a stroller down the street.
Still not the image you’d expect from a one-time blue blood program savior, despite having millions of views on the internet as of Tuesday night. To be honest, it appeared to be one of those video wills from 90s movies that start, “If you’re watching this, I’m already dead.”
