Arkansas head coach John Calipari, who has earned over $130 million across his decades-long basketball coaching career, including stints at UMass, Memphis, Kentucky, and Arkansas, is the latest high profile coach to publicly comment on his players’ earnings to highlight the disparities in college athletics and advocate for reforms in athlete compensation.
“I’m gonna say this: Nine of my players make more than my assistants. And the other three make more than all my staff,” Calipari said at a press conference that has now gone viral on social media.
Calipari, now in his third season as Arkansas head coach, voiced his frustration over how some college basketball players’ NIL compensation exceeds his entire coaching staff’s despite the school not being among the highest-paying programs.
Arkansas ranks 43rd nationally among NIL spending for top NCAA programs, which ranks low for a Power Four university trying to compete in the SEC.
Calipari’s comments added more fuel to a social media war of opinion that is brewing more each day.
“Coach is correct,” one X user commented. “A free college education plus a stipend and reasonable living expenses should be sufficient for amateurs. Why all the resentment of the people who make this possible for them? Would they rather be playing at Rucker Park well the streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn? College wouldn’t exist without math and sociology majors either? Should those kids get paid?”
The comment was not well-received.
“Technically NCAA makes billions of dollars off the backs of their players 14.8 to be exact,” one user responded.
“Why should the college make 100’s of millions for having sports teams? Btw…No one pays to watch the students go to class,” another disagreed with Calipari.
“If those kids are doing research, absolutely. And these kids are waking at 5 A.M. and often going to bed past 10 P.M. and making the college billions; they are not amateurs,” one netizen clarified.
“These universities are making hundreds of millions off these athletes. Everybody should get a free education.. the deans coaches and ADs should be living off a stipend,” expressed one netizen who is against regulating NIL deals.
Advocacy for College Sports Reform
Calipari’s remarks echo the sentiments of former Alabama head coach Nick Saban and Colorado Buffs HC Deion Sanders, who support the Protect College Sports Act, a proposed nationwide law designed to regulate athlete compensation, NIL rights, and recruiting practices.
Calipari has always been known for his ability to recruit the top high school players. He’s sent a laundry list of guys to the NBA, including Karl-Anthony Towns, a key member of the New York Knicks’ NBA championship squad. Now that the landscape has changed and players are earning more than coaches in some cases, the name of the game is spending. The greatest recruiting pitch these days is mean green.
Even if shameful, it’s understandable why a coach who once had kids running to sell themselves to him — and now has to try to outbid other coaches for those players — would be against the current climate in college athletics. For so many years it was the student-athlete that generated millions for a university and then watched as everyone else from the coaches to the administrators got paid in full.
It’s harder for Calipari to compete and he sees everything he’s worked for as a coach getting away from him. Calipari makes almost $8 miillion per season, while the estimated NIL value for Arkansas’ roster is between $8-$11.5 million this season. Do you think he wants to take a pay cut to help out the program? No. He expects the students to take that L. Rewind the clock back to a day when he had more control over the players, the program and recruiting.
John Calipari Doesn’t Like Players Making More Than Coaches
Despite carrying a hefty salary, Calipari also expressed a displeasure that other established, high-paid coaches are seeing their salaries eclipsed by top players’ NIL deals.
Currently, Kentucky’s Milan Momcilovic is tied with Louisville’s Flory Bidunga for highest NIL valuation at $6M. This means that these two players make more than all but seven Power 4 coaches in the country per season, Calipari, Bill Self (Kansas), Dan Hurley (UConn), Tommy Lloyd (Arizona), Todd Golden (Florida), Tom Izzo (Michigan State), and Micky Cronin (UCLA).
Calipari’s intentions are clear. His comments were to highlight the growing financial dynamics in college sports, the exploding salaries and the challenges those cause for entire programs, as well as the need for structured reform.
College athletics is at a crossroads. It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle after it’s opened, and coaches such as Calipari are trying to do just that, desperately trying to go back to a culture of hoops that they built legendary, lucrative careers on.
