By Evin Demirel
We here at Sporting Life Arkansas can’t get enough of John Calipari.
We revel in his post-Razorback loss faces, we rejoice in the mustachioed Colonel Sanders of a Wildcat fan shadowing him at all times, and we stand in awe of his ability to publicly berate one of his own star players.
But, love him or hate him, you gotta give Cal this: the man tells it like it is. Blue chippers joining his Big Blue Empire need not pretend they actually care about graduating, or investing long-term in a program, or anything else that gets in the way of their one true goal – making mad money in the NBA. In kind of the same way, when the Big Blue Launching Pad helps produce a weekly special called “This is Kentucky Basketball,” (Click on “This is Kentucky Basketball.” Relevant video begins around 19:30 mark.) interviewed players and coaches don’t have to pretend like they want anything else besides their one, real goal: Fire off as short an answer as possible; get on with life.
How else explain Calipari’s response to this fan-submitted question?
“Karen, if I wasn’t coaching, um, I’d probably want to be doing something where I was helping people,” Calipari says, pensively touching finger to lip. “I don’t know what that would be. And when I stop coaching, that’s something I’ll probably would want to do.”
Too bad Cal hasn’t already figured out a way to pull off this whole caring-about-others thing in his current profession. Had he done so, he’d still have a lot of fans at the universities of Memphis and Massachusetts.
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Evin Demirel envies John Calipari for having his own personal stout-faced, mustachioed talisman. Fortunately, he has a blog and Twitter account to dull the blow.
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