Mark Stoops says there's "no issue at all" with John Calipari

Basketball school or football school? Mark Stoops says it’s time to give the debate a rest. After a brief flare-up between the two programs a few weeks back, the Kentucky football head coach says he no longer has an issue with John Calipari and is ready to move on.

In fact, he says the initial conflict was resolved in “about two minutes.”

“There’s no issue at all,” Stoops said during his call-in radio show Monday evening. “I don’t think either of us has really spent much more time worrying about that or thinking about that. You know, Coach Cal and I — I want nothing but the best for him and all of our programs. I know he feels the same way. We moved on in about two minutes.”

The back-and-forth started when Calipari went public about his desire for a new practice facility on campus for the basketball program. In the process, he called Kentucky a “basketball school” — something Stoops felt was a direct shot at the football program.

“You’ve got to be intentional,” Calipari said at the time. “You’ve got to say, ‘We’re doing this.’ And the reason is this is a basketball school; it’s always been that. Alabama is a football school. So is Georgia. They are. This is a basketball — no disrespect. Our football team, I hope they win games, ten games, and go to bowls. At the end of the day, that makes my job easier and it makes the job of all of us easier. But, this is a basketball school. And so, we need to keep moving in that direction and doing what we’re doing.”

Within minutes — 12 minutes, to be exact — Stoops fired back on social media with a string of tweets.

“Basketball school? I thought we competed in the SEC? #4straightpostseasonwins,” he said.

“Don’t disrespect our great fans like that,” Stoops added in a follow-up, among other retweets sharing similar thoughts.

In his first press conference following the spat, the Kentucky football coach said he would “stay in (his) lane” and keep his focus on “(getting) to the postseason and (winning).”

“I don’t care what anybody says about their program. That’s not my business. That’s not my lane, but when you start talking about my program and others that we compete against — me? I don’t do that. I stay in my lane,” he said. “… I embrace and love the history of our basketball program. I’m proud of it. I love it,” said Stoops. “I didn’t have that history. We understand we’re creating it. I also know people want to win now. I also know it’s my responsibility to get to the postseason and win.”

He also said he wouldn’t be apologizing for defending his program.

“Don’t demean or distract from the hard work and the dedication and the commitment people have done to get to this point,” Stoops said. “Again, I don’t need to apologize for that and I won’t. But we want more and we want to continue to push that. There are so many people, so many fans, so many coaches, so many players that have sacrificed to improve at the level we’ve improved at.

“We all know, this program wasn’t born on third base. Some may, but I can promise you this football team didn’t wake up on third base. We did a lot of work. We did a lot of work.”

Fast forward 16 days, and Stoops is now ready to turn the page and focus on Miami (OH).