John Calipari is a college basketball coach with big ideas.
The Kentucky Wildcats headman likes to push the limits of NCAA boundaries, talk strong about the state of his profession, and isn’t above making wild pitches that would shake up the sport as we know it like moving the SEC Tournament to November.
Calipari has another idea related to college basketball and the fall. In speaking with Kentucky Sports Radio, he made his pitch for official fall basketball practice.
“How about spring football? You like spring football? Something different, right? Spring football. Why don’t we have August basketball for the NCAA?There’s nothing going on in August. Let’s spend ten days of practice — how about we play against foreign teams on our campuses. Do you really want your team to go overseas and play right now? How about we do stuff right here?
So August, for ten days, becomes NCAA basketball. Instead of having to worry about football ending, we’re going to go before it and start in August. It’s too good of an idea, believe me. Plus it’s mine which means it’ll never happen. It’ll never happen.”
Whatever you think of Calipari, that’s actually not a bad idea. He’s right that people love spring football, so why wouldn’t they love a week of free college basketball practice and exhibition games a couple months before the season starts?
Of course, there’s a lot of issues in play here. Every school couldn’t afford to do this and it would cut into player education more than regular practice and games already does. But we all know that Calipari is a “realist” when it comes to why most student-athletes are playing college basketball.
The Kentucky coach is probably most right about one thing. Now that he’s the one who pitched the idea, the NCAA will almost certainly never go for it.
[KSR]
