Attend the SEC’s spring meetings and you’ll slip through the media who are left waiting for the ADs to emerge. With his eyes on the floor, he is averse to the grip and smile nature of the event. He has mastered the art of boring excellence since 2002, saying something noteworthy about once a decade.
Which made Saturday quite noteworthy.The push and pull of Calipari and Stoops was noted in the SEC.
Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal/USA TODAY Network; Jordan Prather/USA TODAY Sports
Barnhart took advantage of a news conference after football coach Mark Stoops spoke about his team’s morning practice. It was the AD’s chance for damage control, everyone thought, after the mess Stoops and men’s basketball coach John Calipari created. Cal began his team’s trip to the Bahamas by pushing (again) for a new practice facility. In the process, he declared Kentucky “a basketball school” (he’s not wrong, but he was impolitic at best) and patronizingly added, “No disrespect to our football team. I hope they win 10 games and go bowling. But this is a basketball school.” Stoops responded by criticizing Cal via Twitter, saying, “Basketball school? I thought we competed in the SEC? #4 straight postseason wins.” She later retweeted someone saying Cal’s comments were “insulting.”
This festival of hurt feelings and public posturing was so revealing that it had other SEC schools—Arkansas, Chestnut Y Tennessee—openly mocking Kentucky on social media. The assumption was that Barnhart would put out this internal arson and close ranks with a show of unity.
That’s not what happened. Barnhart did little to hide his disdain for this fight. “I’m very hot right now,” he said at one point in a media briefing that lasted almost half an hour. He wasn’t there to lead a “Kumbaya” choir.
“I have two coaches who have been with me, one with 13 years [Calipari]one 10 years [Stoops]Barnhart said. “I hired them both. I gave them the opportunity to train here, their families to come here, to win championships here, to go bowling here. I have walked with both through thick and thin. … And they have been provided with every opportunity to do exactly what they want to do in order to be successful. That is not changing. As long as he is in office, we will have that support. If that’s not good enough, you know, coaches change a lot in today’s world.”
Phew. Barnhart put his Hall of Fame basketball coach and the school’s best football coach since Bear Bryant on timeout and told them to behave like adults. It is worth examining what his message said to each man.
The conjecture here is that Barnhart is not only upset with Calipari for tweaking a rising football program, but for repeatedly taking his requests for practice facilities to the public, and doing so at a time when Cal’s popularity in Kentucky is on the upswing. its lowest point. Coming off a 9-16 season in 2020-21 and an awful NCAA tournament first-round loss to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in the 22nd, this power play to improve facilities is insulting. Maybe win a few games in March and then get back to the table?
Calipari has brought up the facility issue multiple times in the five months since Kentucky’s most embarrassing loss in men’s basketball history, to a program that has facilities many high schools could commiserate. This seems like a naked attempt to deflect blame, but Cal has some supporters. His media spokesperson, Seth Greenberg, even took to Twitter last week to declare that the Wildcats’ current practice facility isn’t among the top 50 in the nation. (Go ahead and make a list of the 50 that are best, Seth.)
If the 15-year-old Joe Craft Center, once considered the best in the country, really is a serious detriment to recruiting, how has Kentucky racked up the No. 3 class in the nation so far by 2023? What if the Wildcats add two more five-star prospects, as many expect, in New Jersey products DJ Wagner and Aaron Bradshaw? It would almost certainly be class number 1, somehow overcoming this terrible handicap of facilities.
This could have been what Barnhart was getting on Saturday when he said this: “We’ll make sure we’re not entitled. I wrote that as one of my closing notes. We will not be a titled department. We will be grateful for what we have.”
With Mike Krzyzewski retired, Kansas’ Calipari and Bill Self are probably the two highest-paid coaches in college basketball. Cal was given what Barnhart called a “lifetime contract” three years ago, a 10-year deal worth $86 million. Hearing that guy make excuses for not being able to reach a Final Four since 2015 or win an NCAA title since 2012 is more than a little off-putting. Go assert yourself on the floor (something that could happen at 22-23, with Kentucky looking to have a loaded roster).
All that said: Calipari’s original point is true. There are, by my count, seven “basketball schools” in the Power 5 conferences: Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Syracuse and Maryland. Historically, they are much better at basketball, and their fans care more about the round ball than the pointy one. Stoops’s overreaction to that quote helped heighten the tension.
However, Kentucky probably has the best football fans of that group. They have been very resilient over the decades, continuing to show up and support teams that were routinely outscored in the SEC. Now that times have changed a bit, Kentucky football fans are rightfully excited about his track record, including a rare preseason ranking in the top 25.
In recent years, the soccer program has outgrown while the men’s basketball has fallen short. That has apparently empowered Stoops to return fire as much as he did in Calipari, including Saturday’s statement that “I’m staying in my lane. That’s in defense of my players, in defense of the work we’ve done. And believe me, we want to keep pushing. But don’t belittle or distract from the hard work, dedication, and commitment that people have put in to get to this point. I don’t need to apologize for that, and I won’t.”
There was a time in Kentucky, basically from 2009 to 2015, when John Calipari could strut his stuff like the undisputed big dog he’d always wanted to be. These are no longer those times, and the pushback from Stoops and Barnhart underscores that. Football is king in college athletics, and soccer is growing, while men’s basketball is dormant in Kentucky. For once, Cal doesn’t have all the juice on campus.
Calipari and Barnhart have never been a natural mix of personalities: one loves to be the center of attention; the other steps back. Barnhart didn’t hire Cal the first time he took the men’s basketball job, instead taking the memorably terrible pick of Billy Gillispie, and then having no choice but to hire the guy who brought Memphis to the brink of the 2008 title. For many years, assistant AD DeWayne Peevy served as something of a buffer between Cal and Barnhart, but now he’s DePaul’s boss. His presence could be missed.
Here’s what we know: A sports director who usually does his business behind closed doors has made his displeasure public about this football and basketball catfight. Mitch Barnhart’s remarkable message: If teamwork within the department isn’t your thing, that’s the door.
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