Mark Stoops no longer has to worry about John Calipari at Kentucky.
Matt Zemek, 16powers.com
Mark Stoops enters the 2024 college football season at Kentucky a liberated man. He no longer has to deal with John Calipari as a colleague within the University of Kentucky athletic department.
Stoops and Calipari got into a public spat two years ago when Calipari called Kentucky a basketball school. With Calipari failing to make the Final Four since the 2015 season, impatience from Kentucky fans continued to mount with each successive year. In 2022, Kentucky was a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and viewed by many as the favorite. The Wildcats were promptly bounced from the tournament by No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s. The Calipari-Stoops public war of words unfolded several months later, a clear product of Calipari’s struggles combined with improvements made in football by Stoops. It was understandable enough. The coach of the sport with deep cultural significance felt pressure and did not handle it well. The coach of the sport with less centrality – and comparatively lower annual expectations – wanted to defend his turf and remind everyone how good a job he was doing.
The two men might not have genuinely disliked each other, but the dynamic involving them was undeniably uncomfortable. Calipari expected to be in the Final Four a few times more than what he was able to achieve. Stoops, who has won January bowl games at Kentucky and produced 10-win seasons – truly remarkable for a long-suffering program – did not want his achievements to be minimized.
When another highly-seeded Calipari team crashed out of March Madness in the first round – as No. 3 Kentucky lost to 14th-seeded Oakland – Kentucky fans’ patience with Calipari had run out. Sensing this, Calipari looked for an exit ramp and found it in Arkansas, a job which had opened up due to Eric Musselman seeking a reset at USC. In a rapid-fire series of events, Mark Stoops was freed from the uncomfortable situation which had existed at Kentucky for the past few years. Stoops no longer has to worry about John Calipari, which – on one level – should make him happy.
Yet, how does the old saying go? Ah, yes: “Watch what you wish for – you just might get it.”
We don’t know if Mark Stoops privately and secretly wanted John Calipari gone in Lexington, but if he did, now we have a situation in which Stoops no longer has a Hall of Fame basketball coach to point to as someone who is failing to reach expected standards at Kentucky. Calipari failing to maximize talent and resources in basketball was in many ways the best thing Stoops could have wanted at UK. Stoops could point to himself as an overachiever at a football program which isn’t expected to do much. Calipari, on the other hand, was coaching one of the bluebloods of college basketball and went nine years without a Final Four at the end of his Kentucky tenure. When Calipari had everything rolling, Stoops was operating in Calipari’s shadow, but when Calipari began to struggle, Stoops looked better and better with each year Cal stumbled in March.
Now Stoops is the veteran, established coach of a revenue sport at Kentucky. The basketball program is led by a first-year coach, Mark Pope, who is not a proven commodity in the sport and can therefore coach in his first season with an underdog mentality. Mark Stoops loved that identity in the football realm, but now, the Calipari-for-Pope exchange has actually put UK football a little more front and center. Stoops might face more pressure, not less. Calipari leaving might not be the happy, relief-filled event it seems to be on the surface.
As we turn to the 2024 Kentucky football season, two men might determine more than any others if Mark Stoops gets the last laugh against John Calipari.
Brock Vandagriff was a very prominent and widely discussed Georgia football commit. Given how the Georgia quarterback room has evolved over the years, with Carson Beck earning the starting job last season and keeping it for 2024, Vandagriff knew that he wouldn’t get much playing time in Athens. He needed to go to a place where he could step right in and immediately play. Enter Kentucky. Everyone in Lexington and the SEC will be intensely interested in how Vandagriff tackles this situation and responds on the field. Will we see a quarterback with a high ceiling, or will we watch a player who couldn’t win the starting job at Georgia and has more limitations than anyone was previously willing to concede? The answer to that question might determine the ultimate trajectory of Kentucky’s 2024 season.
The other man who will significantly influence the course of the Wildcats’ journey this year is the man who will call the plays Vandagriff will run for Big Blue. Bush Hamdan arrives as Kentucky’s new offensive coordinator. If you have studied Bush Hamdan’s history, you will find that he has been associated with winning football operations, but hasn’t necessarily been the main ingredient in that larger process of winning. What do we mean by that? Here’s the story:
Hamdan served under Chris Petersen at Washington when the Huskies reached the 2016 College Football Playoff. However, Hamdan was not the offensive coordinator for that team. He was a position coach (receivers) on that particular coaching staff. Hamdan was the offensive coordinator for the 2018 Washington team which won the Pac-12 championship and reached the Rose Bowl, but that Washington team was a defense-first team. It beat Utah in the Pac-12 Championship Game by a score of 10-3, and the game’s only touchdown was a defensive score by the Huskies. It’s not as though Hamdan specifically had a lot to do with the 2018 Washington team’s achievements, but he was on the staff.
In 2022, Hamdan was the quarterback coach at Missouri. The Tigers did okay that year, but they took a big step forward in 2023, winning the Cotton Bowl and becoming a top-10 program. Hamdan, however, wasn’t around for that big season. He went to Boise State after the 2022 season and coached in Idaho in 2023. Did Hamdan’s quarterback coaching at Mizzou in 2022 lay the groundwork for 2023? To an extent, yes. However, the recurring theme about Bush Hamdan is that he has participated in some big team accomplishments without being the obvious reason for those accomplishments.
At Kentucky, Hamdan needs to be the guy who achieves things in a central and direct way. If he can unlock Brock Vandagriff’s talents, Kentucky should have a good year, and Mark Stoops can find it that much easier to put John Calipari in his rearview mirror.
