Let's Talk Blue Balls

Well, the Final Four is only 5 days away. So naturally, the world of college basketball is focused solely on the only program that matters in March 2009: the University of Kentucky. In a move that would make Scott Boras and A-Rod proud with its egotism and self-indulgence, Kentucky has completely taken over the sports news wire by firing coach Billy Gillespie on Friday afternoon.

At first, I was not in favor of this move. My main problem was that Gillespie was only given two years on the job at UK. Football coaches are given normally 4-5 years, that way they have the chance to get at least one recruiting class all the way from junior year of high school to college graduation. In basketball, you have maniacs like, well, Billy Gillespie start recruiting kids in middle school. So, in effect, they need 2-3 years longer than a football coach to actually get their first true recruiting class in. In that sense, Gillespie got a raw deal. He was playing with Tubby Smith's players and scrambled with his only two recruiting classes.

Amazingly, of all people, Pat Forde changed my position on the story. Forde took readers back to when Kentucky first hired Gillespie. I had forgotten how Kentucky was publicly rejected by Billy Donovan (who also preemptively removed his name from the UK search in 2009, before UK even officially announced Gillespie was out), Jay Wright of Villanova and Rick Barnes of Texas. Kentucky, arguably the most prestigious job in all of college basketball, was stunned that anyone would turn down their offer. When three coaches rejected them, Kentucky fans were as "blue in the face" (terrible) as they were when they had to live through the Sol Smith-As-Point-Guard era. Like a college sophomore that put on 10 lbs in fro-yo after their boyfriend dumped them freshmen year, Kentucky rushed to the first coach that would take them, he jumped at the chance to get the hell out of the state of College Station, TX, and that's how Gillespie became the coach. It was a bad decision at the time, and it makes much more sense to me why Kentucky would jump at the first chance to get rid of him. He was always a stopgap, never the real long-term solution.

Now, like all college coaching changes, you can't really judge the decision to fire a coach until you see who the school gets as a replacement. It was a good move by the AD if, like the Beyonce Direct TV commercials, they get an upgrade-upgrade. In this case, it looks as if Kentucky is making a good decision. The rumor is that by later tonight, John Calipari will be the new coach of Kentucky with a deal for 8 years, $35 mil. Calipari has taken two schools to the Final Four, so he already has a better resume than Gillespie did in 2007. He also is at a non-BCS school and has no national championships, so for Calipari the move to Lexington will not only be an upgrade, but its facilities and history may be what he needs to get over that last hump (free throws, what?). He also has the advantage of playing in the SEC, so there will not exactly be deep competition to win the conference every year. Whether or not has has really cleaned up his act from the UMass-Marcus Camby days is still a concern, but when you are as embarrassed as Kentucky is right now, they are apparently willing to take on the risk. Now we'll just see if he's the Roy Williams that returns the team to prominence, or the Kelvin Sampson who totally F's over a traditional power.