Hand delivered that night.......didn’t know that, but sure glad it happened that way. The arrogant fraud got a taste of his own medicine
Cal's honeymoon at Arkansas is already over
- Thread starter silentsaregolden2.0
- Start date
It absolutely did . I don’t have many connections or get much inside information but I do in this case .
I don’t think people Understand just how much Mitch despised Cal. Yet he still sucked up his pride and orchestrated that public sit down and vote of confidence a few days before Cal overplayed his hand. I think AD’s in general have a shit job and that had to be an all time shit week for ours. At least he’s pulled off two good bball hires this past year.
Yeah Kentucky really didn’t meet any kind of demise similar to Memphis. When he left Memphis they were getting popped for D Rose and even still the fans and administration was begging for him to stay.
Kentucky’s demise at the end of the Cal era was more of a cultural implosion as a result of him
Staying. The fans were largely done and the AD wanted him gone but couldn’t realistically move him.
Basketball wise we didn’t suffer a lasting demise at all. A few months after it all went down we are still sitting here in top 10 with a bright future.
What we saw was the demise of Cal, not Kentucky.
I don’t think that’s true. Those girls took a lot of shit and they should have ignored it but they didn’t. But yeah they did endure the worst of us.
it hasn't been a full year yet - something could still be out there yet to be discovered
Mitch has made several mistakes, he hired BCG, he bit on Cal's UCLA leverage and gave him a fat contract with an impossible buyout and he bit on aTm's leverage and gave Stoops an impossible buyout.
Those last 2 put the university in a really bad spot and giving Cal that one sided contract is some of the reason Cal is who he is. It fed his ego and he knew he had UK by the balls. We just witnessed the worst side of Cal the last few years, now Arkansas is gonna see it.
Cal knew UK couldn't fire him, so he could do whatever the hell he wanted and he did just that.
He wanted UK badly in 07 when BCG was hired, he finally got the job in 09 and I'm sure he had SOME great intentions, but I don't think he ever had UK's best interest in mind, I think it was always about him and the NBA. Looking back on it now, he never regretted his "greatest night in UK history" comment. That guy really has a hard on for the NBA.
It seems like maybe Kentucky's current players don't have handlers. If that's the case, I hope it stays that way.
I will say Mitch was in a no-win situation with Cal in the contract situation in 2019. Seeing what we got out of Cal, it looks horrendous giving the contract in retrospect but that was a time that Cal still had an extremely high approval rating and his stock was very very high. If Mitch had let Cal go to UCLA (the school who leads us in NCAAT championships) and then Cal won MORE titles for them, Barnhart would have been mercilessly lambasted for centuries. I think everything worked out just the way God intended.
If Arkansas would play a team with a pulse they may lose. The are playing some teamed named Maryland Eastern Shore today. Wow, what a juggernaut! I’m the friendly confines of their home arena too. Do they ever leave Bud Walton?
Oh I think you are right. I would have been incredibly pissed if I was Mitch. Sticking your neck out on the line for all of the world to see that interview and then basically get stabbed in the back. I'd been furious. Mitch by no means has been perfect but as an AD you are only a about 50% right. Someone always thinks your a doing a shitty job.
That is true and we had just come off back to back E8 runs where we were a single stop and blatant ref cheating from a final 4. He absolutely should have re-signed him, but he should have sent a counter proposal where the buyout went significantly down based on results or years here. If there were no massive buyout the contract would have been viewed a lot better.
Is there anyone who knows the exact timeline? I remember Cal and Mitch had that meeting where some of us were hoping for a longshot of Cal being fired but it was all like a kumbaya moment with Mitch saying everything is good, we're all on the same page and just the utter dejection (that I felt anyway) that nothing was going to change. But then 48-72 hours later the news broke he was leaving for Arkansas. So I guess that meeting didn't go exactly the way Cal planned? Was he negotiating before or after the meeting? Was that he resented the idea of Mitch meeting with him about the state of the program and didn't think he needed to answer for anything?
