LEXINGTON, Ky. — Mr. Calipari went to Washington.
Yes, John Calipari, the Kentucky basketball coach, was part of a Mitch Barnhart-led UK group that met with the Kentucky congressional delegation (and others) to ask for help with sorting out the NIL mess in college athletics.
Only, during his press conference on Friday — his first since UK’s loss to Kansas State in the NCAA Tournament on March 19 — Calipari said he would rather not rely on the government to fix all of college sports’ problems.
“Anybody out there who’s a businessman, do you want government in your business? No. We’re asking government to get in our business,” he said. “So why don’t we try to solve some of this ourselves.”
So what would Cal do?
“When I call the dog, he goes the other way,” Calipari joked. “When I talk to my wife, she says, ‘I can’t hear you.’ You really want to hear what I’m saying?”
That’s why we asked the question.
“The first thing we could solve easily is the transfer portal,” Calipari said.
His fix: Go back to a student-athlete having five years to play four. If you want to transfer without sitting out a season, you can. Once. That’s it. If you have a year-ending injury, or a mental health issue, or you want to transfer a second time, you sit out the season before getting a fourth year of eligibility. There would be exceptions for missionary trips, military, etc. That’s it.
“In high school they give you semesters, don’t they? Do they let you play at 23 (years old) in a high school game? You can’t,” Calipari said. “We’ve got guys playing at 26 and 27. I’m for the players, but this is about the safety of an 18- and 19-year-old.”
(It should be noted that Calipari will have many 18- and 19-year-olds on his 2023-24 team.)
No more COVID years. The extra season for those who were eligible for the COVID athletics year of 2020-21 is about to run out anyway. There should not be 28-year-olds playing, said Cal, “who has two kids, his wife, he’s on his second marriage but he’s playing. You can’t do this. That’s not what this was.”
Said the coach: “We change that and it would eliminate 70% of our problems.”
Cal also had some thoughts on NIL. It’s a sticky subject with Big Blue Nation. Many think the UK coach (and UK athletics) isn’t doing enough. Cal said he’s just not going to tell us, or his competitors, what he’s doing.
“We have the No. 1 recruiting class in the country,” the coach said. “So we’re on top of things.”
So how would Cal fix NIL?
“Make it transparent,” he said. “Don’t we have a clearing house for academics? Why don’t we have a clearing house for name, image and likeness?”
The coach then repeated his NIL idea. Allow the players to give a certain amount of NIL money to help take care of their families. The rest of the money would go into a fund in the student-athlete’s name that would be recouped when he or she finishes participating in college athletics.
“You do know on our campus every one of our students can get a Fidelity account for free,” Calipari said. “Dr. (Eli) Capilouto started that. How about if our freshmen put in a few hundred and all of a sudden they learn about it and compound (interest)?”
Then, said Cal, his freshmen could leave school with — instead of student debt — “a few hundred thousand or more to start their life.”
Make no mistake, said Cal, he’s all for the players getting money. They should make as much as they can. “I just don’t want it to harm them,” he said.
And Cal, like so many coaches and administrators, believe what is going on now is harming the game. And there are things the NCAA — aside from a legal showdown versus state laws — could do to make it better.
“Now that I’ve said it, is there any chance that they’ll do that?” he said. “No. No chance.”
