John Calipari on Texas, Oklahoma additions: 'It separates us and it didn't change the footprint'

The upcoming 2024-25 season features a lot of change for John Calipari now that he’s at Arkansas. However, he’s still the longest-tenured SEC coach and will remain apart of the league as it expands.

Calipari began as coach at Kentucky back when the conference was at a measly 12 total schools, just before Texas A&M and Missouri were added. Now, he’s hung around the league long enough to see it expand again with Texas and Oklahoma, which are additions that he believes are in line with the rest of the conference.

“Well, Texas and Oklahoma, you know, both in football and basketball, what they add, it just made this league just keep separating,” he commented of the additions down at the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Florida. What he really likes, though, is that the SEC didn’t stray away from its southeastern roots too much by adding the two new schools.

“And we didn’t have to change the footprint,” Calipari added, perhaps taking a small shot at other power conferences. “When you start going east, west and time zones and all that… We’ve been able to do this and stay within the footprint of what we’re doing. Just my guess.”

While the Big Ten and ACC have now stretched literally from one coast to the other with schools littered in between, the regional aspect of those leagues is virtually gone. Sure, the SEC continues to creep further west, but it remains a stronghold of powerhouses in that southeast corner of the continental United States.

“You know, they won’t change that if anybody — I’m not saying anybody’s being added — but they’ll be either in the footprint or they wouldn’t be added to this league,” says Calipari.

Oklahoma and Texas aren’t typically considered southeastern, but they’re close enough to Missouri, LSU and Arkansas that it doesn’t feel crazy to consider the Longhorns and Sooners members of the SEC.

Now, if the SEC was to add more teams, John Calipari also believes those teams would fall within the current “footprint.”

Well, you look at the ACC teams that want to get out — Clemson and Florida State, and then maybe North Carolina. All three of those programs are certainly in the SEC footprint, but Carolina specifically offers a pathway into a new state altogether for the SEC, which could be appealing down the road. As could FSU and Clemson for obvious football reasons, and Virginia is another who could get the SEC into a new state.