Out of his time

 Poor John Calipari, the dear man. Why, just look at him out there.

Look at him thrashing around through the Jurassic Period, looking for some tasty ferns to gnaw on. It's OK, because the raptors aren't up and around yet. And as for the fearsome T-Rex ... well. you can hear those big dumb oafs coming from miles off, the way they blunder and crash around.

So Calipari is safe for now, dinosaur that he is. He's not at all happy, but he's safe.

The familiar landscape he's always known is changing now, see, and not because T-Rex has passed this way, knocking over trees and uprooting the ground cover in his big-dumb-oaf way. It's because Calipari has coached college basketball for decades, and he no longer recognizes it. Where did his world go?

It's the unspoken question that was behind everything Coach Cal said yesterday at the SEC basketball media day, where the Arkansas coach told everyone if college buckets was going to become wholly transactional, he'd hit the bricks like Jay Wright, Tony Bennett and Jim Larranaga have. Even Bruce Pearl abruptly called it quits -- although with that notoriously shady character, you'll always wonder if he merely fled the premises before the NCAA could close in again.

Anyway, Coach Cal said he misses the days when he could build relationships with his players, because so many of them now are vagabonds flitting from one school to the next via the unregulated transfer portal.  It's why Calipari has told his players if they announce they're entering the portal, they're done at Arkansas. Changing their minds and deciding to stay will not be an option on his watch.

"I don't mind kids transferring," he said. "You just can't transfer four times, because it's not good for you. Four schools in four years, you'll never have a college degree. But that last place you'll be at, they'll really be loyal to you? No, you're a mercenary."

God bless the man, he's absolutely right. But like any dinosaur, he's also entirely out of his time.

Not to say blind to his own role in the changing of his world.

All that talk about building relationships, for instance, sounds more than a bit odd coming from a man who was Coach One-And-Done when he was at Kentucky. Under his regime, Lexington was a halfway house for players who needed somewhere to hang for a year until they could enter the NBA draft. What sort of relationship was he building with those kids? And how were they not the very mercenaries Coach Cal now decries? 

Yes, college buckets is uncomfortably transactional now for relics like Coach Cal, but then it always has been. The difference is, back in the day, it was transactional only for coaches, not players. They chased the buck just as aggressively as the players do now, trading (as the players do now) loyalty for a fatter paycheck and brighter lights. And, like the players, they never look back, let alone wring their hands in despair over unfulfilled relationships.

So, yeah, Coach Cal and his like-minded brethren have a definite blind spot there. Even if they are as right as ham on rye.

Poor John Calipari.  Why, just look at him out there.

The Extinction Express is coming, and there's nowhere to hide.  If only he could see he helped set it in motion.