John Calipari (Jeff Houchin Photo)
Kentucky coach John Calipari certainly understands the financial crunch that COVID-19 is going to place on college athletics. First there was no NCAA Tournament and now there might not be a college football season.
Iowa announced Friday that it was cutting four sports — men’s gymnastics, men’s swimming, women’s swimming and men’s tennis. Earlier Stanford cut 11 sports, including several that produced medal-winning USA Olympians in 2016. Other schools have dropped sports and almost every college is cutting costs in various ways.
That’s why Calipari says not to worry about “competitive equity” this basketball season because there will not be any.
“We can’t worry about, ‘So and so played more league games than us,’ or ‘Why is our schedule harder than theirs?’ Let’s just play. There’s not gonna be competitive equity. This is about one term: survival. Survival of athletic departments,” Calipari said.
He made those comments recently on ESPN Radio with hosts Keyshawn Johnson, Jay Williams and Zubin Mehenti.
Calipari says there will be schools that cannot play for financial or safety reasons this season.
“OK, keep the jobs, keep the scholarships, and play next year. Don’t end sports because we can’t get this up and running. Now, it may happen, but we’ve got to move slowly for these kids. Not just to keep them safe, that’s the No. 1 thing, but what about their mental health?” Calipari said.
“You can’t keep a kid in a room for 20 hours a day when he’s 18 years old, and think that’s gonna work and that there won’t be mental health issues. We’ve been arguing that one. I argued that on my campus, ‘You’ve got to give me access because they want access to me.’ It’s not the other way around.”
Calipari said his players have questions about the season, what’s going to happen to them or what’s going to happen to their families.
“All of this stuff is uncharted waters, we’re not going to have competitive equity, we’re just not,” Calipari said.
