Calipari Needs True Razorback Moment

With word Kentucky tacked onto all things Arkansas basketball, new Hogs coach has one thing he can do to make fans only see him in red

Former Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari reacts during a game against Arkansas in Bud Walton Arena. / Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – When all this recruiting stuff is over, new Arkansas coach John Calipari will need to take a moment to do something truly Razorback.

Don’t get this twisted. He has hit the ground running and has crushed it in landing so many high profile players for his first roster. 

There’s no doubt Arkansas fans appear to be nothing but grateful for how well things have gone. It’s just everything so far has felt, well, a little blue. 

The only image of Calipari out on the recruiting trail is from early on when he was out in one of his signature blue suits. His high school recruits are former Kentucky commits. Most of his portal findings have been former Kentucky players with possibly more to come. 

It’s been an impressive haul that has created a lot of buzz around the Natural State. However, from the moment word started leaking out about Calipari on a Sunday night no one who follows the Hogs will ever forget, every part of the process has been tinged by the words “former Kentucky.”

Former Kentucky coach. Former Kentucky assistant. Former Kentucky commit. Former Kentucky player.

At some point Arkansas fans need a moment with their coach that is wholly their own without the smell of fresh cut blue grass and thoroughbred manure drifting through the air. So, with Calipari consumed by the transfer portal, he might need a suggestion for how he can put together a special moment with the fans. 

The splash needs to be big, the support universal and it should tie directly to the basketball program. Those parameters open the door to one major move – spearhead an effort to get a statue of Nolan Richardson to be installed outside of Bud Walton Arena. 

While the former Razorbacks coach still displays the cognitive skills of a 40-year-old, he’s no spring chicken. He’s 82. America was still reeling from the shock of the attack on Pearl Harbor a few weeks before when Richardson was born. 

There’s no doubt he deserves it. His 1994 national championship is the only universally recognized national championship Arkansas has ever won in one of its three major sports. Yes, in Arkansas Frank Broyles is honored for a 1964 championship in football for the Hogs’ undefeated season, but Alabama is recognized across the country as the national champion from that year as the AP and Coaches Poll winner. 

For that historic season and as the leader who wisely guided Arkansas in abandoning the Southwest Conference, leaving behind Texas and its collection of in-state whipping boys for the more stable grounds of the SEC, Broyles rightfully got his own statue late in life. Now it’s time for Richardson to have his historic success immortalized and Calipari is the man with the influence to make it happen. 

Without Richardson, there is no Calipari at Arkansas right now. He took the foundation laid by Eddie Sutton before him and crafted a monster. 

Once a football school, the Razorbacks became and still remain an athletics program built around basketball. Once the football program fell into what is now nearly a 40-year span of mediocrity dotted with fleeting moments of success, Richardson’s powerful teams filled a vacuum that could only be satisfied by creating a building to hold the largest yearly crowd in all of college basketball. 

Even in the lean years that followed Richardson’s departure, so much rose and fell with the state of the program. Everything needed for Eric Musselman to wake the sleeping giant once more was still in place, laying the groundwork, much like Sutton, to hand off to the next major coaching star. 

Putting his clout behind getting the Richardson statue built complete with a passing of the torch moment between the two where Calipari can thank him for making a John Tyson situation possible before promising to once again feed the monster is a Razorback moment in the making of epic memory Arkansas needs. Declaring his support for this to happen after recruiting wraps is the true red action needed to wash away the lingering blue that still follows Calipari for now.

HOGS FEED:

• Calipari's new approach may be a little more scaled down

• Arkansas' sustained success may involve more of a mental approach

• Razorbacks' path to Omaha relies on Hagen Smith and a prayer

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