WE REPEAT: LET HIM LOOSE, AND WATCH AN EMPIRE RISE
We want to be specific here. We don't want to put Mark Stoops out, or have him anywhere but sitting in the chair reserved for the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats. That chair isn't a very nice one, and is probably a director's chair with the bottom blown out, a wobbly leg, and some old offshore casino account passwords written under the arm. Those belonged to Guy Morriss, and help explain why he can't go back to the Bahamas, ever.
Mark Stoops can stay right in that horrible, cursed chair, doing football things like calling plays and yelling at referees. But we reiterate our call for one of college football's greatest wolves to finally be unleashed on the sheep waiting cluelessly behind their flimsy fence. We repeat: let John Calipari run Kentucky football.
Let Calipari be the strings attached to the puppet, and the World Wide Wes of college football recruiting. You might not even have to pay him more to do it, since Calipari would schmooze, cajole, wheedle, and occasionally arch eyebrows in the direction of a beautiful, low-mileage used sports car sitting in the parking lot, just running and waiting for a young man with a bright football future to drive it around for his mother. His mother, who is leasing the car, because even middle-aged women need to feel the hum of a V-8 monster roaring beneath the tap of their trembling toes.
Calipari would do that for fun, probably. Mark Stoops could literally wear horse blinders if he liked, and claim it was an elaborate motivational gimmick to make players work like the price race horses of the Bluegrass State. Meanwhile, oh--look at that, it's a 5-star defensive tackle committing eight months early to Kentucky, and Instagram pics of John Calipari smiling at Christmas with the family. Mom said he could come back anytime, and Dad said he made him want to be a better man.
Now, we know your concerns: will this affect Kentucky basketball recruiting? No, no it will not, because here's the most spellbinding part of the plan, and the one Kentucky fans will like most. Calipari isn't just doing this because he thinks it's fun; he's doing it because he'll get a cut of every new dollar earned in revenue for the Kentucky football program, and then redirect it back into the basketball budget, and thus back into the recruiting pipeline. And even at the margins, the money you can skim off football beats the hell out of fighting for more hoops money. (Just ask athletic directors: they've made careers off it.)
You weren't totally sold on this plan until tax fraud was involved, were you, Kentucky? It's just the cherry on top here, but every sundae needs a garnish, and we know the ones you love best.