Things haven’t been going well lately, by UK standards, but they also haven’t reached the depths of the situation that led to Fisher’s departure. And, for as big as everyone around here thinks Kentucky basketball is, college football — especially in the SEC, and especially in Texas — is always going to be a bigger business.
Fisher’s buyout remains an extreme outlier even in that context. The largest previous buyout paid to a college football coach by a public university was the $21.7 million that Auburn gave Gus Malzahn to leave four years ago. In college basketball, nothing has even come close to that.
If the university can’t pay Calipari to leave, why not the athletics department’s biggest donors? Why wouldn’t, say, coal magnate Joe Craft, who was sitting courtside in Pittsburgh on Thursday night, and his wife Kelly write a check for $33 million to see change within the program?
Multiple people familiar with the situation told the Herald-Leader in the immediate aftermath of Kentucky’s loss to Oakland that there’s no way Craft, specifically, would do such a thing. Others with direct knowledge of the situation said later Friday afternoon that there have been preliminary talks exploring the possibility of a buyout involving the Crafts.
But even if he had an extra $30-plus million to give to UK Athletics, Barnhart would surely want to make better use of that money to further the department’s overall goals. Joe and Kelly Craft have been generous donors to several different UK Athletics initiatives over the years, and they have a close, working relationship with Barnhart.
Everyone involved knows there are more logical ways to spend that kind of cash.
And Capilouto is currently dealing with multiple high-profile headaches, the debate over the faculty senate’s role and the possible impact of DEI legislation at the state level among them. Is the president of a public university with that much on his plate really going to wade into the PR disaster that would come with paying a Hall of Fame basketball coach $33 million to sit at home? All while promising the next guy even more than that to do the job?
According to UK’s most recent NCAA financial report, the athletics department was responsible for $1.2 million in severance payments during the 2022-23 fiscal year. That means if the university did fire Calipari, whose buyout would be paid in monthly installments, it would be responsible for more than five times that amount next year.
