No Time to Spare: John Calipari’s Whirlwind Hiring by Arkansas Sends Shockwaves Through College Basketball
On Wednesday, John Calipari, the Hall of Fame men’s basketball coach who guided Kentucky to the 2012 NCAA championship, was hired by Arkansas as their new head coach.
With a maximum of two automatic rollover years for NCAA Tournament appearances, the 65-year-old Calipari inked a five-year contract with an annual base salary of $7 million through April 2029. This would stretch the contract until 2031.
Together with one-time bonuses for qualifying for the NCAA Tournament, advancing to the second round, the Sweet 16, the Final Four, and winning a national title, the pact also includes a $1 million signing bonus and retention payments of $500,000 for each year of the contract.
Calipari’s hire was announced in a press release by Hunter Yurachek, the director of athletics and vice chancellor of Arkansas.
There will be an introductory press conference in Fayetteville on Wednesday night.
Eric Musselman departed to take a job at Southern California, and Calipari took his place. After three straight NCAA Tournament trips, including a trip to the Sweet 16 last season, he takes over a program that finished 16–17 the previous season.
In a video, Calipari declared that he was leaving his position as coach of Kentucky on Tuesday, stating that the team “needed to hear another voice.”
After going 410-123 in 15 years, including 23-10 this past season, he left the Wildcats. However, by Kentucky standards, the last three NCAA visits have been underwhelming with a 1-3 record, including first-round defeats to No. 14 Oakland last month and No. 15 Saint Peter’s two years ago. Both times, the Wildcats were among the top three seeds.
Following his most recent NCAA defeat, athletic director Mitch Barnhart quickly announced that Calipari will return for the upcoming campaign, despite initial calls for his dismissal. If that had been done, he would have been fired in accordance with the terms of a 2019 10-year, “lifetime” deal that required a buyout of more than $33 million.
With Calipari’s announcement and Arkansas’ dramatic move—which, considering the coach’s background, initially elevates the Razorbacks to the status of SEC contenders—Kentucky no longer has financial concerns. Kentucky won six regular-season crowns and six conference tournament titles; however, it has not won the tournament title since 2017.
“It was my dream job,” Calipari said in the video. “Anybody in our profession looks at the University of Kentucky in basketball and said, ‘that is the bluest of blue.’ The last few weeks we’ve come to realize that this program probably needs to hear another voice that the university as a whole has to have another voice giving guidance about this program that they hear and the fans need to hear.”