Coach Cal looks to bring fun back to Arkansas and find some for himself

Arkansans crave relevancy. They always have. That desire is woven into their DNA, a hunger well earned.

A state so beautiful border to border, and yet too many Americans likely can’t point to it on a map. A state with so much to offer, and yet so many in the Deep South can’t quite bring themselves to believe that Arkansas is one of theirs, while the cowboys of the Southwest can’t quite accept it as one of their territories, either. Few areas are anchored by more money (see: the Waltons, aka the Walmart folks, live there), few campuses are prettier than the one in Fayetteville, and even fewer fan bases are more rabidly loyal (see: the birthright that is the sneakily difficult correct execution of the “Woo Pig Sooie” hog call).

And that is why Arkansans have embraced John Calipari. The coach who already is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, with his national championship ring, 33 regular-season and tournament conference titles and 855 career wins, most among active coaches. Oh, and that straight out of central casting, Moon Township, Pennsylvania, Italian hoops coach accent, complete with multiple “fugazi” references when chatting about the transfer portal and so much hand movement that one might assume if he were handcuffed, he’d go mute.

It doesn’t feel very Arkansas. But it didn’t feel very Memphis or Kentucky, either. But he spent nearly a decade with the Tigers and then a decade and a half in Lexington, the place he departed in April to become Head Hog.

“What Cal does, just by stepping onto this campus, is he puts Arkansas basketball back into the national conversation,” said Nolan Richardson, the only coach to lead the Razorbacks to a national title, earned in 1994. Richardson still groans when he recalls his Hogs’ first game as defending champs, when they were romped by Calipari’s UMass Minutemen in a season-opening 104-80 blowout. He’s had to revisit the game often since Cal’s hire, including during a chat with the current team in August. “There is no way, no matter what happens, that you can talk about college basketball in this country and not include some talk of, ‘Well, what’s John Calipari up to down in Fayetteville?’ This place and program deserve that attention.”

Attracting attention has never been a Calipari issue. But sometimes, that attention turns weird. It certainly did in Lexington, where he coached the Cats to a dozen NCAA tournaments in 14 chances, including a natty and four Final Fours, and most assuredly would have been 13-for-15 if not for the COVID-19 pandemic that stopped the 2020 season just as the SEC tournament was getting underway with Kentucky as the No. 1 seed. But over the next four seasons, he missed the NCAAs outright in 2021 and failed to get his team past the second round each of the last three years. Big Blue Nation set the bluegrass aflame. What’s more, he openly criticized UK’s hoops facilities as compared to what he was seeing on the road in the SEC basketball arms race and even fell into a bizarre public spat with Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops.

So when Calipari made the decision to bolt BBN to head west for WPS (“Woo Pig Sooie” for you out-of-towners) to replace now-USC head coach Eric Musselman, the announcement was initially met with an understandable amount of shock. But that was quickly transfused with a dose of relief. On all sides.

“I think that we all want to win games and championships, but we also want to enjoy what we are doing while we pursue those goals,” Calipari, 65, said as Wednesday’s Arkansas season tipoff against Lipscomb approached. “I find enjoyment in challenge, but also in the chance to maybe impact people. It starts with the guys on this roster, but then it also applies to this school and this state that I am still getting to know. We all feed off energy. Right now, for me, there is certainly a lot of energy to feed off of. And there is also no lack of challenge.”

Challenge, as in no roster. “How about, when you take over a program and you ask to see the team before you do your press conference, and guess what? There’s no team,” he said. Now that team is made up of three Kentucky transfers, three highly rated freshmen who had originally committed to Kentucky, and All-AAC and All-SEC transfers in Florida Atlantic’s Johnell Davis and Tennessee’s Jonas Aidoo, a group procured largely thanks to NIL checks written by Razorbacks backers.

Challenge, as in competing in a conference that used to be “Kentucky and the Others” but has become a roundball minefield. “We used to have these meetings, ‘Guys, we need to all really promote this as a basketball conference to help each other out’ and now we have eight teams in every March and first-round NBA draft picks and lottery picks every summer and millions spent at every school on facilities, recruiting, travel. Every game you feel that now.”

Challenge, as in always having to shift the conversation from where he was to where he is. “I am rooting for Kentucky. Of course, I am,” Calipari said. “I gave my heart and soul to the place for 15 years. I love [new head coach] Mark Pope. He is one of them. He is the perfect hire. I will root for him and them except for the day we play [Feb. 1], but until then I’m pretty much done with that topic. I have too much to worry about here”

And challenge, as in not accidentally saying Cats instead of Hogs or accidentally singing “On on, U of K” instead of “Arkansas! Fight! Fight! Fight!” “When Hunter [athletic director Hunter Yurachek] came to get us to fly to Fayetteville for the introduction, I had to tell him, ‘Hey man, I don’t have anything red to wear.’ He said they had plenty and I could change on the plane.”

However, as energized as Calipari is by his new wardrobe, new surroundings and new roster — his projected starting five has just one returnee from last year’s Arkansas team — there are questions to be answered in the face of the larger challenges facing all of collegiate athletics, pains that seem to have been felt the sharpest within the realm of men’s basketball. Nearly all of Calipari’s coaching contemporaries have hung up their whistles in recent seasons, from Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski to Jim Boeheim and Jay Wright to, just last month, relative kid Tony Bennett, who stepped down at Virginia saying, “Can I give everything, can we build a program in this way, or is it, is my way more designed for the old model?”

Calipari, who started his coaching career in 1982 as a Kansas assistant under Ted Owens, has joked, “I am the old model.” He has four players on this Arkansas roster who are sons of players he coached. In September, he hosted his annual Coach Cal Fantasy Experience, where $2,500 toward his charitable foundation will get campers a weekend of either playing or coaching alongside former Arkansas and Calipari players.

“It’s like the old TV show, ‘This Is Your Life,'” he recalled, laughing, shortly after this year’s camp, the first at Bud Walton Arena, had wrapped up. “We had campers who had done the camp at Kentucky for years, new guys from Arkansas, and even old friends from Memphis and UMass. It’s a life flashing before your eyes kind of thing for me, but in a good way.”

Old guys with knee braces dishing it off to their teenage sons, guarded, coached and encouraged by former Arkansas greats like Joe Johnson and Pat Bradley. All trying to re-create the “40 Minutes of Hell” up and down the court emblazoned with the name of Richardson, the last coach to lead the Razorbacks to a Final Four. That was in 1995. So long ago that Calipari was still in Amherst, one year away from his first Final Four, and another Arkansan, Bill Clinton, was in his first term at the White House.

To many throughout Arkansas, from Little Rock to Fort Smith, that was the last time their state achieved the national relevancy it deserves. Now their desire to feel that warmth again is matched only by the yearning carried by the man whom they look to lead them back. John Calipari already has the relevancy. Now he’d like a little fun mixed in, too. Fun found in winning. The valiant last stand of the old hoops coach in this new hoops age, a revolution staged in a state that prides itself on making new money and clearing new paths while keeping itself rooted in old-school Natural State sensibilities.

“There is a lot of work to do, and everyone here understands that,” he told a group of Hog callers as practice got underway in October. “But if we get the payoff that we know we are capable of, then there will be plenty of smiles to go around.”