Calipari's Hiring Initially Taken as Joke Aimed at Hogs Fans
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – April Fool's Day was last week.
That was about the only thought my head could form through the fog of the Tylenol PM needed to finally get me to sleep last night. Yet, there it was on both the cover of the allHogs site and ESPN.
"College Hoops Fans React to John Calipari Reportedly Leaving Kentucky for Arkansas" the allHogs.com headline read. "Sources: John Calipari Finalizing Deal with Arkansas" it read on ESPN. I wasn't sure whether I was still asleep or simply woke up in the Twilight Zone.
Sundays are my day off and quite frankly, I needed a full break from all this college coaching search stuff. It had gotten ridiculous and I was tired of people asking me about every absurd rumor out there that had no validity. Just before I fell asleep, I glanced at Twitter and saw a plane tracker going from Fayetteville to Lexington along with a comment about John Calipari wearing a red tie in a restaurant.
I told my wife about it and when she saw it, she had a similar thought to mine. Fans are getting even further out of hand and some of the other reporters in the state hit their breaking point with the insanity and had started trolling them.
We had a good laugh and at some point I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I had a frantic text from Andy Hodges.
"Where did that story on front come from?" he wrote.
To understand the stress from such a text, we're in the middle of a transition between the former owner of Sports Illustrated's digital properties, Arena Group, and Minute Media. Because the process went a little haywire the first day of the NCAA Tournament, a temporary site editor was built so all the college and pro sports sites could get back online as quickly as possible.
The downside to this is, at the moment, any publisher can put a story on any of the other sites and it can't be deleted. When we saw this, the first thing Hodges said is he wanted to put something involving "Woooo Pig" up on the Texas Longhorns site.
Now, he's over-invested in this whole Texas rivalry because he's from back when that game was big on a national level. however, Hodges is a professional. That's a step further than he would go even for the sake of games that were played before most Arkansas fans were alive.
That didn't mean someone over in Kentucky didn't want to troll us and Razorbacks fans by posting a story poking fun at all these Calipari rumors. Fortunately, in the haze of the early morning, I accidentally went to the ESPN site instead of our home site first.
Seeing that headline on the front page there and then clicking over to our site and seeing it is one thing that will clear up the most potent PM medicine effects. It's amazing what happens in this industry when you take a day off to refresh and spend time with family.
After a little time to process, the reaction is this:
1. Recruiting is about to get even more crazy than it was the past few years, which is saying a lot.
2. Arkansas is getting a Coach Cal who is motivated. He has slogged his way through the last five years at Kentucky dealing with the constant weight of Wildcats fans sucking the joy out of life. He is going to give the Hogs his best because he wants to prove himself to the Kentucky fan base he just left.
3. The Razorbacks are probably only getting Calipari for the five years of his contract, but it just made the next coaching hire light years easier. Arkansas will never be more attractive than ever the day he retires.
4. Hogs fans can stop whining about the handful of super wealthy people in the state not paying for the program on their behalf because that's exactly what's happened here. The story floating around is the Tyson family got involved to make this happen, although we've not had a chance to independently verify that story. Obviously, at least one booster, possibly more, got together and decided to prop up the basketball program because Calipari isn't at Arkansas without a massive salary and NIL pool. Early reports are somewhere in the area of $8.5 million per year over five years and $5 million in NIL, but until things are made official, work with the numbers subject to change approach. Just know whatever it is, the dollars are big.
5. All those SEC Network games are about to get upgraded to first class. The Hogs are going to be on ESPN and ESPN2 much more than before.
6. The quality of regular season games is going to increase. Calipari doesn't shy from playing big national spotlight games. Top players want to play top games and he gets that more than perhaps any coach in history.
It's going to be fun. This will be an experience Arkansas has never had. It's Musselman's 2022 recruiting push that brought Anthony Black, Jordan Walsh, Nick Smith, Joseph Pinion and Barry Dunning on steroids.
Expectations will be high. The national spotlight will be on Arkansas at all times.
It's now up to Razorbacks fans to do their part. The table is set for the next decade plus to be as great as there has been in Arkansas since the late 80s, early 90s of the Nolan Richardson era.
If the fan base can do its part and not do something stupid, the ride is going to be generationally memorable. So, enjoy the eclipse, soak in the national championship game, and get ready to ditch the bus because Calipari's loading fans on a Leerjet
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KENT SMITH
Kent Smith has been in the world of media and film for nearly 30 years. From Nolan Richardson's final seasons, former Razorback quarterback Clint Stoerner trying to throw to anyone and anything in the blazing heat of Cowboys training camp in Wichita Falls, the first high school and college games after 9/11, to Troy Aikman's retirement and Alex Rodriguez's signing of his quarter billion dollar contract, Smith has been there to report on some of the region's biggest moments.