A Simple Yet Awesome Act By John Calipari Showed Why He's The Perfect Coach For Kentucky Basketball
So over the weekend Kentucky held its Blue-White game in Pikeville to help fundraise for flood relief that devastated Eastern Kentucky. Awesome. But even better? This post by John Calipari. A picture that shows a man covered in dust and his coal mining gear sitting with his son. The backstory is simple, the man didn't have time to clean up or change after working his shift. He wanted to make sure his son enjoyed his first game. So he just .. showed up.
A picture was taken and Cal took notice. He tells the story of his family and why it means so much to him. I know everyone sees Cal for who he is today, but when you watch the 30 for 30 on him or read about him, you know where he came from in Pennsylvania. He wasn't rich. He wasn't flashy. That all came as he got older.
Advertisement
Luckily Kentucky fans are the best in the country and it took roughly 30 minutes to track this guy down:
It's not some over the top offer. VIP tickets to a game of their choosing. A simple thank you to a guy who was just being a dad. That's why Calipari is the perfect coach for Kentucky. He 'gets it.' It's cliche to say. But it's true. That's part of the job with Kentucky basketball. There's nothing like it in college hoops. You have to handle the fans, you have to understand the state, you have to combine being a senator and being a college basketball coach. There's no one better than Cal at that.
[The Athletic] - She’d answered the phone when Calipari called around 3 p.m. from his personal cell.
“He said, ‘Hey, it’s Coach Cal.’ I just kind of sat there like, is this real?” Mollie says. They spoke for about half an hour, Calipari sharing how his own grandfather was a coal miner. “He said he passed before Cal was old enough to experience any of that but said, ‘I wanted to know what I came from,’ so he actually went into a mine with a crew. They told him going down, ‘We go in together, we come out together. No one left behind, because we’re one crew.’ He said, ‘That’s what I teach my team — that we’re one team and we can only do it together.’ Just to know somebody that popular took the time and wanted to do something like that is amazing.”
This is why I'll defend Cal until I'm dead. Yes, we can nitpick his x's and o's. We can nitpick how he puts out lineups. But he gets it. He's the only coach in college basketball that has a 'championship or bust' set by fans. He has to try and live up to expectations while also connecting with the state. He didn't have to invite Michael and his family to a game, he didn't have to tweet about him. But he did because he gets it.
Shout out Cal. Good luck spinning this into a negative, Rico.