The new Wildcats coach and former player brings humility, for the first time since the Tubby Smith era, and a sense of communal ownership.
“He can grow a full head of hair,” insists Mark Pope’s wife, Lee Anne. “And there would be no gray in it.”
Yet the men’s basketball coach of the Kentucky Wildcats has shaved his blonde hair down to a short stubble for most of his adult life—your basic jarhead Marine recruit look—because it’s simply easier. His cut is so low maintenance that when his four daughters were little, they sometimes did the honors of giving dad’s dome a shave. If they messed it up, who would even notice?
At age 52, Pope isn’t much of a coiffeur. Among the many stylistic shifts accompanying the new coach at Kentucky, this is one of the most telling. Not the hair itself, but what the hair represents.
“I don’t think there’s anyone who spends less time thinking about himself than Mark,” Lee Anne continues. “He’s the most secure human being I’ve ever been around.”
A few of Pope’s forerunners dared to consider the biggest role in college basketball to be their personal pet project. There used to be peacocks in Kentucky, at least until the Saint Peter’s Peacocks started the last defrocking of the newest, most regal bird to grace the sidelines in Lexington. Adolph Rupp was no shrinking violet in the early years of Big Blue Nation, and both John Calipari and Rick Pitino brought enormous egos to the team.
Large characters for a large role. As long as they emerged victorious, which was usually the case, that was acceptable.
Rupp’s career lasted for decades, during which he won four national titles and established himself as a beloved state figure. However, even The Baron of the Bluegrass was forced to retire at the age of 70 due to a state age law, which may have been relaxed if he had been playing at his peak. For Pitino, who had a bald spot when he came to Kentucky but notably left without one, a lucrative NBA contract enticed him to leave after his star shined brightly for eight years. During the latter part of his 15-year career, Calipari’s vanity project took a drastic turn for the worse, forcing him to relocate to Arkansas in April as a bailout.
Pope now enters. For the first time since the Tubby Smith days, return to humility. Bring back a feeling of group ownership. It will be interesting to watch whether national championship contention returns.
The Lexington Herald-Leader columnist John Clay adds, “The fans in Kentucky want their program back.” “Pope desires to return it.”
There are generations of stories about Kentucky basketball fan ardor, which runs as deep as the coal mines in the eastern part of the state and flows as strong as the Ohio River that forms the northern border from Ashland to Paducah. Big Blue Nation packs 23,000-seat Rupp Arena. It invades opposing gyms. It takes over neutral sites. It is ubiquitous and eternal.
The deceased have been buried in the jerseys of their heroes. The living keep buying jerseys for future interment attire. Money may not be flush for the rank-and-file fandom, but the Cats get their cut in portions great and small.
A 1987 preseason intrasquad scrimmage in the tiny town of Jeff, Ky.—squirreled away in the mountains of Appalachia, just a few winding miles from neighboring Happy—solicited a $1,450 bid for the game ball from a local tire dealer. “I ain’t got no sense when it comes to basketball,” Ted Cook said upon receipt of the ball, speaking for an entire state.
But the greatest fan flex in Kentucky basketball history came last spring, when Mark Pope was introduced as the new coach of the Wildcats. The commonwealth’s zeitgeist was fully revealed on April 14.
Athletic director Mitch Barnhart was irate by that point. Dan Hurley, a two-time national champion, decided to stay at Connecticut rather than accept the position. Former national champion Scott Drew traveled far enough with Barnhart to encourage his wife and children to come look around in Lexington, but Drew decided to stay at Baylor. The program’s countless fantasies of employing Billy Donovan were dashed.
Barnhart had thus turned to BYU coach Pope. His connections to the program were strong; under Pitino, he captained Kentucky’s highly skilled 1996 national championship team. He hasn’t won a game in the Big Dance, and his resume from the NCAA tournament is bare. Should the eight-time national champion program with the most wins in men’s basketball history be trusted?
Unlike trying to convince those more accomplished coaches to come to Lexington, his interview went in reverse. Barnhart got the hard sell from Pope for why he should get the job. He is a geyser of positive energy, a slightly goofy 6′ 10″ presence with Labrador retriever enthusiasm and a med school brain. Pope’s pitch started with his vision for the introductory news conference.
“You can hire somebody that’s going to go up there and you’re going to hand them a jersey and they’re going to do a photo shoot and throw [the jersey] in the corner,” Pope told Barnhart. “But when we do this press conference, I’m going to bring my own jersey, and it’s got blood and sweat and tears on it from the national championship season. And that’s the difference between me and anybody else for this job.”
Barnhart was sold, and the deal came together quickly, with word leaking out late on April 11. But the backlash from a fan base expecting to land a coach with championship rings was fast and furious—hence Barnhart’s anger.
At 6 a.m. on April 12—4 a.m. in Provo, Utah, where Pope was—Barnhart called his new coach and told him, “I’m pissed. We’re taking this press conference to Rupp.”
Pope felt apprehensive. What if a lackluster fan base decided not to attend? What if there are thousands of empty seats in a massive building together with friends and family?
However, Kentucky fans eventually came around to having one of their own in the position after a day of complaining about who wasn’t hired. They supported the hiring.
“The battleship capsized,” according to Barnhart. “I’ve never witnessed a change in momentum like that.”
The news conference was not ideally timed to draw a crowd—it was a Sunday afternoon during the final round of The Masters. But when Pope and UK officials got to Rupp, lines were already forming to get in hours ahead of time.
Meanwhile, Kentucky concocted a clever callback introduction. Pope and his family would enter Rupp on a bus, the same way he and the 1996 team did after winning the national championship the night before in New Jersey. But Pope added one last touch.
Before the appearance, UK had arranged a meet-and-greet for Pope with other former players. During that session Pope came up with an idea—let’s put all these former players on the bus, too. And so they did, with generations of Wildcats both famous and obscure walking off to resounding applause.
The 1996 team came off last, with Pope the final one to appear, holding the national championship trophy skyward. What greeted him was a stunning sight—roughly 19,000 people showed up for a news conference.
The very fact that this became a 1990s Kentucky love-in was a departure from the Calipari era. Cal gave nods to the program’s gilded history, but the Pitino era was not celebrated during his 15 years anywhere near the way it was when Pope and his teammates got off the bus.
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