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Myron Medcalf
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — While John Calipari has watched some of his peers — such as Jay Wright, Tony Bennett and more recently Bruce Pearl — surprisingly exit the men’s college basketball game amid major changes to the sport, the 66-year-old coach said he’s not considering a similar early departure.
But the Arkansas coach also said he would leave when he can no longer do the job the way he wants.
“I want to help 25 to 30 more families,” Calipari said during SEC media day Tuesday. “The only way you do that is to be transformational as a coach. If you’re not, you’re transactional. If I become transactional — ‘I’m going to pay you this to do this and that’ — then I won’t do this anymore. I don’t need to.”
Although Arkansas added key players — such as five-star recruit Darius Acuff — the program also lost standout talents to the transfer portal, including Boogie Fland (Florida) and Zvonimir Ivisic (Illinois). In his attempt to avoid the turnover many teams have experienced, Calipari has warned his players that entering the portal means their time with the Razorbacks is over, even if they have second thoughts.
“That’s why if someone puts their name in the portal, I say, ‘You’re not coming back,’ because it’s not going to be transactional.”
Calipari said he still had the same passion to coach and any observer of his practices at Arkansas would see that he was still “connected” to his players. He also said he planned to stay in college basketball because he wanted to make positive changes for the next generation of coaches, which includes his son, Arkansas assistant Brad Calipari.
“Kelvin Sampson and I just talked,” Calipari said about the Houston coach whose son, Kellen, is his top assistant. “I said, ‘We’ve got to fix some of this stuff before we’re out for our own children.'”
Despite the issues, Calipari said he would know it was time to retire if he could no longer build genuine relationships with players. The current era has made that ambition more difficult. The portal might offer immediate benefits to those who enter it, Calipari said, but he worries about what comes next for some of those who’ve bounced around to multiple schools and failed to establish those connections.
“I don’t mind kids transferring,” he said. “You just can’t transfer four times, because it’s not good for you. Four schools in four years, you’ll never have a college degree. But that last place you’ll be at, they’ll really be loyal to you? No, you’re a mercenary.”
