Despite another year of underachievement in the NCAA Tournament, John Calipari will return as Kentucky head coach in 2024-25. The school’s decision certainly appears to be motivated by one specific factor.
Matt Norlander of CBS Sports suggested on a recent “Eye on College Basketball” podcast that Calipari’s hefty buyout is essentially the only reason he is returning for another season. More specifically, Norlander said one prominent Kentucky booster was reluctant to fund a Calipari firing, leaving the university with little choice but to retain the coach.
“I truly believe that the only reason John Calipari is the coach at Kentucky is because it is too expensive to pay him out of his contract,” Norlander said (1:30 into the video). “Talking to two sources in the past two days, one of the biggest sticking points here is a lot of that money would have to come from the Craft family, which is among the biggest donors around the Kentucky men’s basketball program and Kentucky athletics. I was told Joe and Kelly Craft are just not going to pay John Calipari north of $30 million, no matter how you decide to pay him that money and how that would get paid out over installments. They are not going to let him walk away with all of that money, much of it being the money that they would have to put forth to do it.”
That does not mean the situation at Kentucky is stable. Norlander noted that Calipari and athletic director Mitch Barnhart have a poor relationship, and their meeting following the Wildcats’ loss to Oakland marked their first substantial talks in months.
Kentucky would owe Calipari a huge sum of money if they were to fire him without cause right now. That number will go down in the years to come, so his job security will only get more tenuous if results do not improve. For now, however, he is safe.
