03 Aug 2025 Chat with a champion
By David Grimes
An overflow crowd gathered at the Clinton Presidential Library on July 15 to hear an energetic and inspirational speech from University of Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari. The head Hog was the featured speaker at the weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Little Rock, which meets there in the Great Room each Tuesday for lunch.
Coach Cal will begin his second season in Fayetteville this fall, coming off a 22-14 record during his inaugural year, which included a trip to the NCAA Sweet 16 this past March.
Calipari told the crowd how he was raised in a Catholic, blue-collar, working-class household in Pennsylvania. His father was a steel mill worker and an airport baggage handler, while his mother worked in a school cafeteria.
He joked that years later, as he had become a successful college coach, his dad told him, “I don’t know what you’re doing, kid, but keep fooling them.” What he was doing was becoming one of the greatest coaches in the history of basketball.
Calipari got his first head coaching job in 1988 at the age of 28 at the University of Massachusetts. He led the Minutemen to the NCAA Final Four in 1996, before heading off to the NBA for a few years.
He returned to the collegiate ranks in 2000, when he was hired as head coach at the University of Memphis, leading the Tigers to the Final Four in 2008.
His success in The Bluff City led him to be hired to coach at the University of Kentucky in 2009. The Wildcats are arguably the bluest of the blue bloods when it comes to college hoops, and Cal did nothing to diminish that legacy.
During his 15 years in Lexington, his teams went 410-123, going to four Final Fours and winning the NCAA national championship in 2012. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 2015.
Calipari was asked by program moderator Rex Nelson to detail the circumstances that led him to Arkansas. He said that in April 2024, his longtime friend John Tyson set the wheels in motion.
After he was offered the job, Calipari said he was unsure what to do, but as he was seeking guidance, his priest advised him to go take a walk. Go walk for an hour as the coach at Kentucky, then walk back for an hour as the coach at Arkansas. When the walk was over, Calipari was a Razorback.
He described his first season in Fayetteville as one of the most rewarding he’s ever had. It was challenging at times, as the Razorbacks battled injuries while starting 0-5 in SEC play, but as the team came together, it finished strong with the impressive NCAA tournament run.
Expectations for the Razorbacks are even higher going into the 2025-26 season, as Calipari has added one of the best recruiting classes in the nation to an already stacked returning roster.
