John Calipari on NCAA panel exploring summer college basketball

John Calipari’s grand idea for summer college basketball took a big step forward today. The NCAA has established working groups to examine “competition opportunities in the summer” for men’s and women’s college basketball. The groups will begin meeting next month with the goal of presenting their recommendations to the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Oversight Committees in June 2023. If the committees decide to move forward with the concept, it would be up for approval in the 2023-24 legislative cycle with the earliest possible date for competition being summer 2024. Not surprisingly, John Calipari is a member of the men’s working group, along with Providence head coach Ed Cooley, various athletic department administrators, league commissioners, and student-athletes.

Currently, teams are allowed to take foreign trips over the summer that include exhibition games every four years. After Kentucky’s trip to the Bahamas, Calipari started banging the drum from a summer college basketball season, specifically two to three exhibition games against Division I opponents in July and August. The games could be televised, which means more revenue for conferences, and the added exposure could create more NIL opportunities for players.

“Why not play games in Rupp Arena against good teams, maybe teams that won’t schedule you but now they’ll play you in a summer game and people get to see that, or against in-state teams, whatever?” Calipari said in a conversation with Kyle Tucker. “Have it televised on SEC Network. I’ve been pushing for five years now that we need to be doing stuff in the summer to bring light to college basketball, like spring football, except we’re playing games. And now it’s catching on, like OK, maybe we do need to do this. It’s something that we just can’t wait for. You can’t say, ‘Well, in three years.’ You can’t wait. We have to protect the kids, protect the sport.”

The wheels are in motion to make it a reality, as soon as summer 2024.