John Calipari Deserves Major Props For This

As you may have gathered if you have read here for any length of time, we’re not the biggest John Calipari fans in the world. We don’t have anything necessarily against Kentucky itself. We get it. If any fan base gets Kentucky fans, it should be Duke.

So we thought what John Calipari did for one Wildcats fan was just beautiful.

Coal miner Michael Joe McGuire wanted to go to Kentucky’s Blue-White game in Pikeville but he was cutting it close. Plus he wanted to take his son so that he would understand (trust us, we really get this part).

He didn’t have time to clean up or change out of his work clothes, so he was in the gym with coal soot on his face.

Not surprisingly, his photo went viral and he became, at least for a time, the very symbol of Kentuckian’s devotion to their basketball team. It’s still a mystery to us how any SEC program got good at basketball but bless them for it.

Anyway, Calipari saw it and was touched. Turns out his grandfather was a West Virginia coal miner and for him, it must have been a powerful image.

So he set him up with VIP tickets to Rupp, which was an immensely decent thing to do.

By the way, if you’re wondering why Kentucky was in Pikeville instead of Rupp, it’s because they were fundraising for people who were devastated by the recent floods. We’ll give Cal credit for that too. He’s really put some effort into helping those folks and we hope everyone in Kentucky is proud of the program for all of this good work.

Well done all around.