Mark Stoops wishes John Calipari, family well after being named Arkansas head coach

Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops wished former basketball coach John Calipari well as the latter accepted the job at Arkansas.

Calipari left Kentucky after 15 years to sign a five-year deal with the Razorbacks. Stoops got to know him quite well, despite apparently clashing over social media between football and basketball.

Nonetheless, it was a respectful goodbye.

“I would like to wish (John Calipari) and his family well in their new endeavor,” Stoops wrote on Twitter. “We spent 11 years working together and I really appreciate all they did for UK and the Commonwealth.”

The supposed beef between Stoops and Calipari stemmed from comments made by the basketball coach in August of 2022. Calipari claimed Kentucky was a “basketball school.”

“This is a basketball school. It’s always been that,” Calipari said. “Alabama is a football school. So is Georgia. I mean, they are. No disrespect to our football team. I hope they win 10 games and go to bowls. At the end of the day, that makes my job easier and it makes the job of all of us easier. But this is a basketball school. And so we need to keep moving in that direction and keep doing what we’re doing.”

During a press conference a few days later, Stoops said that he was “done” with the situation involving Calipari and addressed it with his players.

Stoops and Calipari seemed to butt heads over the subject but it didn’t quite spill over.

“I was told about comments Mark Stoops made in his press conference. I reached out to Mark Thursday & will try again. Comparing our athletic dept. to others was my bad,” Calipari tweeted August 13, 2022. “I have supported Mark & the football team through good and bad. I will continue to support them & cheer them on.

“Now I’ll do what I’ve done for 30 years: Coach my team and block out the clutter.”

For all that he has done in his career, his decade and a half in the bluegrass was the most notable time on the sidelines. On the court, the Wildcats went 410-123 (.769) overall with a dozen conference titles, a dozen selections in the NCAA Tournament, and four Final Fours with one national championship.

Then, off the court, though, he has been equally successful with eight No. 1 recruiting classes with only two outside the top-two and just one outside the top-three. That has led to a record number of selections in the NBA Draft with former alumni of his littered across teams in the association.