John Calipari commends SEC for focusing on basketball

SEC basketball has taken a giant leap forward over the last decade or so, which Kentucky head coach John Calipari credits to an influx of financial and administrative support from the very top of the league.

“I’ve said this over and over for 30 years: basketball coaches win games, administrations win championships, because they invest in it,” Calipari shared after his Kentucky squad’s latest win over Missouri.

As the longest-tenured head basketball coach in the league, Calipari has watched the SEC’s development from third-rate hoops league to quite possibly the best in the country year in and year out — and that standing could be cemented once Oklahoma and Texas arrive. But in Cal’s eyes, the upward spike in basketball quality across the conference starts with the television money that was ultimately invested back into hoops several years ago.

“You think of what happened in this league. Mike Slive got that TV deal done. Now, you had a choice of where you put all that money. Put it into one sport or you could say basketball needed it, and many of the schools said ‘we’re investing in basketball, we’re investing in baseball, we’re doing this, we’re going to upgrade football stuff.’ And now, all of a sudden, they got unbelievable facilities, they got the top coaches in the country, they’re able to go recruit.”

For Calipari himself, nowadays, the airways are a bit more crowded when he heads down to Georgia for the Peach Jam each year.

“I was with Mike Krzyzewski, in 2013, we would go to Augusta (GA) and he would be in a private plane and I would be in a private plane, matter of fact Joe Craft’s plane, right. How many planes are private now? Everyone in our league is in a private plane moving around to recruit.

“If you think you’re going to fly commercial during the year and do this job and recruit and then stay overnight and get a 5:00 flight back, you better be 30 years old.”

“So now, the investment in their facilities, the way they travel, the way they treat their players, everybody charters. That investment came from that TV deal. And then it is like the cool place to play now. I mean, this is a hard league now now.”

For Kentucky, that means a much tougher road to an undefeated SEC slate, like they produced in 2012 and 2015.

“The bad news is it’s hard to run the table or do anything like that anymore. But the other side of it is… I can remember Frank Martin a apologizing to people int he room that he beat, because I ruined your season, because we aren’t very good and we just beat you and knocked you out of the NCAA Tournament. You remember when you lost a game to somebody and they’d say ‘alright, you went from 10 to 21.’ That doesn’t happen now.”

In the modern landscape, the SEC produces as many great teams from year to year as any of the top conferences, and that’s a very good thing in John Calipari’s eyes.

“I’m saying, in our league, it’s really hard. But it’s the way it should be instead of — I said at that time we should be getting seven, eight, nine teams in, and that’s where we are. It wasn’t because of me. Maybe chasing Kentucky was part of it, but I think it’s the investment that administrations made to upgrade all these basketball programs.”