‘We’re not 100%.’ Criticism of Calipari brings scrutiny to Barnhart’s contract extensions.

In the wake of Kentucky basketball’s NCAA Tournament loss to Oakland, it was impossible to ignore the calls for coach John Calipari’s job.

But the clearest argument against firing Calipari centered around his contract. Thanks to an extension awarded Calipari in June 2019, three months after his Wildcats just missed a trip to a Final Four due to an overtime loss to Auburn, Kentucky would have owed Calipari more than $33 million if it fired him this spring.

Since UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart has thus far declined interview requests to discuss the men’s basketball program (other than an appearance alongside Calipari on “BBN Tonight,” the LEX-18 show produced as part of a paid partnership with the athletics department), it is unclear how much, if any, that buyout factored in the decision to retain Calipari.

If the 2024-25 basketball season ends in disappointment again, Calipari’s buyout will surely be a topic of conversation again next March. The buyout would drop to around $27 million (75% of the remaining salary on the contract that runs through the 2028-29 season) but would still set a record for the largest total paid to fire a college basketball coach.

Calipari’s contract is not the only recent extension that has not aged well for Kentucky.

UK awarded football coach Mark Stoops a raise in November 2022 that made him one of the 10 highest paid coaches at a public university with a $9 million-per-year salary. The day after the contract was signed Kentucky lost at home to Vanderbilt, snapping the Commodores’ 26-game SEC losing streak.

As UK’s all-time wins leader, Stoops’ job is safe for the foreseeable future, but his team is just 8-9 since the contract extension was signed. The cost to fire Stoops is 75% of his remaining salary. As of Dec. 1, 2024, that buyout would be just less than $44 million.

While Calipari and Stoops remain at Kentucky, Barnhart has already made the decision to eat the cost of the extension he awarded former women’s basketball coach Kyra Elzy after the team’s 2022 SEC Tournament title. Elzy followed that extension with back-to-back 12-win seasons.

After firing Elzy in March, Kentucky owes her the remaining $2.475 million on her contract. While that buyout is not close to the ones that would be owed Calipari or Stoops, it still represents a substantial sum for a non-revenue producing sport.

“At the end of the day, Kyra had a run two years ago at the SEC Tournament,” Barnhart said after the news conference introducing new women’s basketball coach Kenny Brooks last week. “It was a magical run. It was a lot of fun, and everybody had a great time. We sort of thought that might be the tipoff of a spot of going on and it just didn’t work out.

“It happens. That’s why we roll it out there.”

After introducing Brooks, who is set to be the third-highest paid women’s basketball coach in the SEC with a salary of $1.4 million next season, Barnhart declined to discuss the men’s basketball program so he could keep the spotlight on Brooks, but he did address the department’s recent contract extensions in the context of the decision to fire Elzy when asked by the Herald-Leader.

“I’m always fascinated: When you do really, really well everybody says, ‘Don’t lose this person,’” Barnhart said. “Then when you keep them and it doesn’t go right they say, ‘You’re an idiot.’ OK, great, thank you. We’re not 100%. I don’t know that there’s an AD out there that is.”

While the Calipari, Stoops and Elzy extensions have not worked as planned to date, there were factors that made them appear more necessary at the time they were signed.

Calipari’s deal came amid reported interest from UCLA. The decision to award Calipari what was initially described as a “lifetime contract” but was in fact a 10-year deal that included a clause allowing him to become a paid ambassador for the university after retirement was generally applauded at the time. Kentucky’s Final Four drought had already reached four seasons at that point, but the 2017 and 2019 teams were just one shot short of returning to the tournament’s final weekend.

Kentucky declined to announce Stoops’ extension publicly in the wake of the Vanderbilt loss, but his deal was signed after he was mentioned as a possible candidate for the open Nebraska job. Earlier that season Stoops had passed Paul “Bear” Bryant for UK’s career wins lead. The week before the contract was signed, Kentucky clinched a school-record seventh consecutive bowl appearance.

Elzy’s contract extension came after she led the Wildcats to the second SEC Tournament championship in program history. UK probably needed to win the SEC Tournament to secure the league’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid to extend its season, but it clinched a second NCAA Tournament appearance in two seasons for Elzy as head coach.

“I don’t think in the world we’re in you’re ever going to be 100%,” Barnhart said. “We’ve had some contract extensions go really, really well that no one is paying attention to. At the end of the day, I love our coaches and their continued fight.”

Each of Kentucky’s non-revenue sports coaches have signed contract extensions or been hired since 2022.

A proactive approach to extending contracts and rewarding coaches for success has generally paid off in those sports. UK’s three longest-tenured coaches (rifle’s Harry Mullins, volleyball’s Craig Skinner and softball’s Rachel Lawson) have arguably been the most successful coaches on campus since 2020. Mullins and Skinner have led their teams to national championships in that time frame, and Lawson’s squad is poised to extend its NCAA Tournament streak to 14 seasons this spring.

Gymnastics coach Tim Garrison and track and field coach Lonnie Greene both currently lead top-15 ranked teams after signing contract extensions in the last two years. Baseball coach Nick Mingione has his squad ranked in the top 20 after being awarded a new contract last summer.

It’s Mingione’s example that offers a reminder that the final verdict on the Calipari and Stoops extensions cannot be rendered.

UK’s decision to sign Mingione to a new five-year contract in July 2020 looked like a mistake when the baseball program missed the NCAA Tournament in each of the next two seasons with back-to-back losing records in SEC play, but Mingione and company snapped a four-season NCAA Tournament drought in 2023 to reach the second super regional in program history. The Wildcats now enter the fourth week of SEC play tied for the best record in the conference.

Of course, the spotlight will always shine brighter on men’s basketball and football. As the revenue-producing sports that fund the rest of the athletics department, spending in those programs is exponentially higher. With that spending comes added scrutiny.

The fact that extensions have worked out in non-revenue sports also does not necessarily lessen the concern that the most recent contracts Barnhart has signed in his three most prominent sports have to date been followed by a dip in performance.

“You’ve always got to keep hope alive,” Barnhart said when asked to evaluate Elzy’s extension two years later. “That’s really, really important. You have to have hope for your fans, you have to have hope for your team, you have to have hope for your department. That’s my goal. Try to foster that and keep that going as much as we possibly can. “

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