Calipari gets emotional in return to Memphis

Apparently, new Kentucky Coach John Calipari was not kidding when he talked about how difficult the decision was to move from Memphis to UK.

At his introductory news conference at UK, Calipari said the part of coming to Kentucky was easy. But the part of leaving Memphis was difficult.

Upon returning to Memphis, Calipari spoke to reporters outside his home. While talking about how hard Memphis tried to keep him, he got emotional.

Here’s how the scene was described to me:

Calipari: “I know people are going to be angry. I understand. But I hope over a period of time that people will understand that we absolutely loved it here. You have to know I had a lot of opportunities to leave here for more money than I was making, and I never did. If I stayed, I would have made more money here next year than at Kentucky. They asked me a hundred times, `Can we pay you more, can we do more?’ It had nothing to do with that.”

(Cal pauses because he’s starting to get emotional and walks back to his front door. Someone shouts, “Are you coming back?” and he holds up his right hand to say give me a minute. He goes inside and Ken Bennett, the team chaplain comes out and tells the media, “This is very hard for him, give him a minute.”

Calipari returned to the reporters a few minutes later and continued the news conference.