Is Arkansas, the state, prepared for what John Calipari will bring to the Hogs?

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Arkansas in 2024 isn’t Arkansas in 2004. It certainly isn’t the Arkansas of 1994, of 1984. John Calipari wouldn’t have been in Fayetteville if it were.

The state has changed. The state’s flagship university has changed. The state’s basketball team has, too. Nothing was like it once was. It’s called progress and it isn’t always easy for some to take.

The NIL and the transfer portal are generally hated by fans when players from their favorite team exit for a new locale and/or bigger money. But those same fans want that money to throw around and to draw players from other schools to their favorite one. The hypocrisy isn’t new, of course, but it’s about to become more pronounced.

It wasn’t 10 years ago fans from fan bases across the country, not the least of which was Arkansas, were calling John Calipari a cheater, a liar. They despised him – and Marcus Monk – for plucking Malik Monk out of Bentonville High School to Kentucky instead of Arkansas. The Razorbacks deserved the youngest Monk brother, as it were, they believed. The betrayal was tantamount to heresy.

It was also, in the grand scheme of things, pretty inconsquential to Arkansas basketball in the big picture. The Razorbacks were good in those Monk years with Mike Anderson at the helm and followed with even better years under Eric Musselman. What stands out now about the Monk ordeal is how nuts it was at the time. Arkansas fans, in the wrong then, had lost their mind. It was insane enough that country music guy Justin Cole Moore got into it with me on Twitter about it all, how Monk was a fraud, a swindler, not a real Arkansan. Stuff like that.

The stupidity was overwhelming. I was glad when it was gone.

Then it reared its head again this winter. Those same fans were busy attacking their own in January and February. Throwing Arkansas native Devo Davis, who should have left the Razorbacks as one of the most beloved players of the decade, under the bus. Abandoning Trevon Brazile. Rumor-mongering about…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/arkansas-state-prepared-john-calipari-155740143.html

Author : Razorbacks Wire

Publish date : 2024-04-10 15:57:40

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