View from 30,000 feet: How Calipari, NIL, recruiting could come together for success in Arkansas men’s basketball

By Kevin McPherson

LITTLE ROCK — From a global viewpoint at least a handful of factors will be in play in big ways as new Arkansas head coach John Calipari establishes his short- and long-term plans to build a national championship caliber Razorbacks men’s basketball program.

Calipari talked about himself as a person and as a coach after being introduced to Hog fans and media on Wednesday during a ceremony on the floor of Bud Walton Arena.

Some of the insight he shared telegraphed what the building blocks might be as the 65-year-old Naismith Hall of Fame coach endeavors to make Arkansas his fourth Division 1 stop a success after leading each of his first three — UMass then Memphis then Kentucky — to a combined six NCAA Tournament Final Fours and one national championship bridging the 1990s to the 2020s.

Here are five keys to what could help launch Calipari to success at Arkansas, some innate to who he is and his process, and some that are specific to his new relationships with the Arkansas movers-and-shakers who will help him elevate the Razorbacks program …

1. NIL coffer will be substantial for Calipari, according to sources, and it’s just the start. Between $5 and $6 million annually with a viable path to get there was the initial amount shared by sources, and there is optimism to raise more. Tyson Foods mogul, Arkansas booster, and Calipari friend John Tyson in concert with athletics director Hunter Yurachek and a few more key powers-that-be worked to deliver Calipari to Arkansas, but their good will giving goes beyond the 5-year deal that could grow to a near-total $40 million pay day for Calipari. There’s a real commitment to filling up an NIL warchest to compete with blueblood programs and committed SEC programs for the top recruits in the national high school and transfer portal ranks. While Yurachek has downplayed the finality of compiling all the necessary resources, there’s ZERO chance Calipari is calling the Hogs at BWA on a Wednesday without tangible paths to make the commitment a reality. As great a recruiter as Calipari has proven to be for decades — the best ot evet the pay-for-play transformation in college sports gives other coaches hope for a more level playing field, so if Arkansas steps up as a national leader in NIL it means the Calipari advantage as a super-elite recruiter remains in play moving forward.

“I will say that Coach Cal and I talked about NIL robustly,” Yurachek said. “We talked about it on the plane. Him and I are on the same page of where it needs to be for us to be competitive. We’ve got some ways to go to get there. Reports make it sound like it is a done deal and the money’s in the bank. What I will tell you is that’s not the case. We’ve got a pretty good program in place but we’re going to need help from people across this state to make sure that we give Coach Cal the tools that he needs to put a great team on the floor, not only this year but next year and the following year. So him and I are on the same page for what it needs to be and it’s my job to give him the tools to make sure that he can be successful.

2. Players first coach. There’s no other way to explain 50 or so NBA Draft picks emerging from his guidance at the D1 level than putting his players first spanning more than three decades as a head coach. Roughly 30 years as a college coach sandwiched around a four-year stint as an NBA head coach and assistant coach have brought perspectives from mentors and trial-by-fire results that have informed Calipari along the way. If the Jimmy’s and Joe’s truly matter more than the X’s and O’s by an degree, Calipari seems to get it better than most.

“I’m always going to be a players first coach,” Calipari said. “I’m sorry. It’s about the players. For some reason people think you can’t really be a coach that wants to win if you’re about the players. No, you can do both. You can be, ‘Every decision I will make will be, is the best decision for these guys?’ Not me as a staff, nothing. Is it the best decision for them? When we’re doing things, how we’re doing things. You saw my team this year. We played totally different. Why? It was the best way for that team to play … And all I can tell you is I won’t change that. It does change recruiting because of this transfer portal. You can’t have as many freshmen as you usually have. You have a group of freshmen you have a group of returning players or you have a couple transfers that can impact it. Sometimes they’re the Alpha dog, that guy coming in. But even those guys will come here for one reason: ‘How do you make me better, Coach? I want to go to the next level. Can you help me?’ If I see a player that I don’t think I can help, if I’m being honest, I’m probably- Not that he’s not a good player. I don’t want to use some young men and say, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna set screens and (inaudible).’ No. How can I help him get better? That is what my job is, to prepare them for life after basketball. Tell them how to create joy in their life. Do something for somebody else, and you’ll figure out how to create joy in your life.

“Coach Riley, Pat Riley says to me, ‘The best compliment, Cal, I can give you is your team, your players come in this league, and they’re all good teammates. Think about that. For me as a coach, that was the best compliment I can get. Yeah, they’re in that league and get the second deals, they’re doing all the stuff, yet they’re great teammates. That’s what I want to have the base of what we’re doing here, the culture of what we’re trying to do here.”

3. Building relationships, connecting and bringing people together, and putting in the grind of hard work to achieve success. There’s a real celebrity swagger to Calipari, who’s a coaching household name even for those who don’t qualify as casual sports fans. Yet, he leans in on humble beginnings and a selfless approach to building relationships and doing the heavy lifting as a tireless worker — attributes he can model for his players to help them play together and succeed under his guidance. Caring for players is one thing, but showing them how to care for each other and play together is the day-to-day work that pays off in winning.

“I bring people together,” Calipari said. “It’s what I’ve always tried to do. When we get this thing going or we get this thing done, I want thousands of people to say, ‘Without me, this doesn’t happen.’ Thousands. Not just one or two, not my staff. It was everybody came together and said, ‘Without me, none of this happens.’ I look at trying to create that love affair. A love affair between this program and this campus, this program and this state. I know these programs are important to the state. All these programs are important to the state.

“I gotta tell you, so you understand my parents, my dad worked in the mill in Western PA, and then he was a baggage handler. Worked till the age of 70. Still strong at 91. He’s throwing, you know. My mom worked in the cafeteria at the junior high school. She had the white suit and sold the ice cream. We grew up Friday to Friday. You guys know what Friday to Friday — some of you young people don’t know what Friday to Friday is. You get your paycheck and you can make it until the next Friday. Thursday is a tough day. That’s how I grew up. And you know what, no credit cards, layaway, all the stuff, I wouldn’t want to grow up any other way. You knew you had to work or you did not eat.

“When I say I’m a grinder, that’s what I am. I told my sons this, I don’t know why- you look at- I’m telling you, my dad was a baggage handler and my mom worked there. Please, I am just, my friends called me Johnny. Johnny Calipari. I’m not that guy that, you know, it’s me bringing everybody together, bringing the staff together, gathering people, getting the team to understand how you have to work — You ready for this? — Together. Not working by yourself. And then having a dream and a burning desire to compete for championships. Why am I here? That’s why I’m here.”

4. Short-term recruiting success: Building a 13-player first roster from the gound up for the upcoming 2024-25 season. It’s an unprecedented task at Arkansas — filling all 13 scholarships that currently sit vacant — but there are multiple paths to get there for Calipari that include various levels and stages of courting high school seniors and transfer-portal players. We took a deeper look at some of the early potential recruits in this linked Hogville article — Hoop Hogs recruiting tracker — published earlier this week and updated as new names emerge: https://forums.hogville.net/index.php?topic=765836.0

“If you’re not into basketball, you won’t come here,” Calipari said when asked about building his first roster at Arkansas. “If you’re smoking, clubbing, drinking, chasing. This is about being at a place that has zeroed in on a culture that creates professional habits, and that includes academically. We didn’t have any issues, they all finished the term, we didn’t have any APR problems. We had 32 kids graduate, we had six graduate in three years. You can do all that, you can care about the kids and still win.”

5. Long-term recruiting success: The best to ever do it from coast-to-coast, Calipari acknowledged that recruiting starts by evaluating in-state prospects first. In-state recruiting has been the lifeblood of a storied Razorbacks basketball program. From Eddie Sutton’s Triplets (Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer, and Marvin Delph) that reached the Final Four in the late 1970s, to Corliss Williamson leading Nolan Richardson’s Hogs to the ’93-94 national championship and back-to-back title games, to Joe Johnson (Richardson), Ronnie Brewer, Jr. (Stan Heath), Sonny Weems (John Pelphrey), Bobby Portis and Daniel Gafford (Mike Anderson), and Moses Moody, Jaylin Williams, Devo Davis, and Nick Smith, Jr., (Eric Musselman) serving as the best players on NCAA Tournament teams through the 2000s — it’s been about the massive in-state talent fueling the best of Arkansas’ successes as a hoops program.

“It’s the first place you look,” he said. “Are they good kids and are they good enough? If they are, we’ll recruit them. I did the same thing at Kentucky. Derrick Willis, Dominique Hawkins. Some of them are on different paths now. It may take them a little long, but so what? Those kids are all professional. Reed Sheppard. ‘Why did he take him? He’s never going to play him.’ What? I play the best players. ‘What do you mean you didn’t start him?’ He’s fine. He’s going to be a lottery pick. How about that? But I’ll do the same here. Archie Goodwin (Sherwood, Ark., native who played for Calipari at Kentucky) was a good player for us. But Malik (Monk, native of Lepanto, Ark., who played for Calipari at Kentucky) was a really good player for us. I have to tell you, Malik never thought he took a bad shot. The reason was is that he got it off. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘What are you doing? You’ve got two people on you.’ ‘I got it off.’ But one of the greatest kids, really smart. His mother already hit me. Marcus already called me. ‘Mom’s going to cook for us. She said she’s coming to practice.’ I love it.”

A couple of in-state recruits coming off impressive performances last week in the USA Basketball junior national mini camp in Phoenix, Ariz. — 2025 national No. 38 / 4-star prospect Terrion Burgess (6-9 combo froward, Benton) and 2026 national No. 38 / 4-star Jacob Lanier (6-6 guard, Maumelle) — told Hogville they’re looking forward to the Calipari era at Arkansas and looking forward to building recruiting relationships with him moving forward.

“It’s big for Arkansas considering it’s Calipari,” Burgess said. “He’s a great coach at Kentucky, was a great coach at Kentucky … I’m looking forward to it, just building a relationship with them. If I was there (at Arkansas as a player in the future) I would just bring the show.”

“Coach Cal is a great hire for the state of Arkansas,” Lanier said. “I love his passion for the game and his players, he understands that we want to play at the highest level and he holds everyone to a high standard, I’m looking forward to meeting him and his staff and hopefully building a great relationship. Arkansas basketball future looks bright.”

Additional national-top-50ish-ranked in-state recruits in the next two classes include: 2026 JaShawn “JJ” Andrews (6-6 wing, Little Rock Christian Academy, ESPN national No. 18 / 5-star prospect); 2025 Isaiah Sealy (6-6 combo guard, Springdale, ESPN national No. 51 / 4-star recruit); and 2026 Aidan Chronister (6-7 wing, Rogers, 247Sports’ national No. 32 / 4-star prospect).