FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The new guy in town regrets the optics. A sterile corner office overlooking Arkansas’ Bud Walton Arena is, for now, a muted tribute to what is about to take place.
“They’ve got this a little bit like a dentist’s office, so I apologize,” John Calipari says, stepping out from behind an empty desk.
Things will soon be cluttered, complicated and all-consuming for the Hogs’ new basketball coach — just not today. Coach Cal has his first new job in 15 years. He must meet people, reveal the personality that comes up on you like a three-quarter court press. Not all of those people are the much-scrutinized recruits who are populating that empty roster Calipari referred to in his introductory press conference.
Some of them are holy.
“We sleep pig and wake pig,” said Father Jason Sharbaugh, who has already spotted Cal on campus at mass. “It’s all the more sweet having Coach in.”
Some of them are tolerated. For now, the hall-of-fame coach is sharing a temporary condo with his son Brad near the center of the campus entertainment district, Dickson Street.
“They said to me, ‘It may get a little loud. It’s down by the strip,’ Calipari explained. “I was there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. No problem. Friday? One place has live music, the other has karaoke, the other has a DJ.
“The whole room is like shaking from [the noise]. I’m sleeping with ear plugs.”
Some — well, one — is a billionaire.
“One of the things Coach Cal does is he out-cares any coach in America,” said John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, close friend and driving force behind Calipari taking the job. “If you do it the right way, the derivative of that is you might win the national championship.”
That’s really what this is all about, isn’t it? Not just the possibility of a natty, the actual documented proof of concept. Calipari has won one among his 855 career victories. His bona fides also include six Final Fours, 12 Elite Eights and 15 Sweet 16s.
None of them lately, of course, but at age 65, Arkansas has become the next podium from which Cal can preach. Yes, Calipari has reached retirement age, but looks 55 and has more left in the tank than an Escalade. Never one to leave flair on the bench, the coach’s departure from Kentucky was as shocking as his arrival here was spectacular.
It was both the suddenness — and the destination — that astounded. Arkansas? Hogs everywhere…
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