LEXINGTON, Ky. — The track record of major college basketball and football coaches who have “lost” their team’s fan bases — which seems now the case for John Calipari at Kentucky — going on to recover and produce a positive ending is not great.

Yet it is not impossible.

Former UK football coach Rich Brooks went from a “dead coach walking” midway through the 2006 season to lead Kentucky to four straight bowl games and assume a respected place in University of Kentucky sports lore when he departed of his own choosing in 2009.

Let’s stipulate that when the time for parting comes, it will be better for everyone involved if UK and Calipari are able to end on positive terms. Regardless, Calipari’s age, 65, dictates there must soon be a men’s basketball coaching search at UK.

As the factors that go into hiring coaches in the current era have become increasingly complex, there is reason to fret that Kentucky’s traditional approach to finding a coach to lead its historically regal men’s hoops program may not work as well as it has in the past.

That is why one of the biggest priorities for Mitch Barnhart and UK athletics administration should be putting together a well thought-out succession plan for choosing — and then acquiring — Kentucky’s next men’s basketball coach.

Historically, “the Kentucky way” of hiring men’s basketball head coaches has been to make a “splash hire” of the nation’s best available coach irrespective of any previous ties to the commonwealth or to UK.

When Joe B. Hall retired, Kentucky hired a coach with a Final Four trip on his resume in Eddie Sutton from Arkansas.

After Sutton resigned, UK lured a sitting NBA head man in the New York Knicks’ Rick Pitino.

Once Pitino returned to the NBA, Kentucky hired a rising coach, Tubby Smith, who had taken Tulsa (two) and Georgia (one) to a combined three NCAA Tournament round-of-16 appearances in the prior four seasons.

With the departure of Smith to Minnesota, Kentucky hired Texas A&M head man Billy Gillispie who had successfully rebuilt both the Aggies’ program and, prior to that, UTEP’s.

Once Gillispie proved to be a poor fit at UK, the university hired the Memphis head man, Calipari, one of the best-known coaches in men’s college hoops.

In the current era, simply trying to land the biggest “star coach” available could prove more challenging.

Had UK and Calipari parted ways after this past season, five coaches who might have been on Kentucky’s wish list as a replacement are Alabama’s Nate Oats, Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd, Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Connecticut’s Dan Hurley and Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger.

The cost to UK to buy any of those five coaches out of their existing contacts would have been immense: an $18 million contract buyout for Oats; $17 million for Otzelberger; $12 million for Lloyd; $10 million for Hurley; and $8.5 million for Pearl.

Yet the size of those contact buyouts are not always static — which impacts the attractiveness of potential hires.

In the case of Lloyd, the Arizona Daily Star reports that his buyout drops to $9 million after the 2025-26 season, then to $6.25 million (2026-27), $3.25 million (2027-28) and, finally, to nothing (2028-29).

Connecticut’s Hurley has a similar buyout deescalation in his contract. According to CT Insider, Hurley’s $10 million buyout after 2023-24 drops to $7.5 million after next season, then to $3 million (2025-26), $2 million (2026-27) and $1 million (2027-28).

Interestingly, two of Kentucky’s peers among men’s college basketball’s historically elite programs, Duke and North Carolina, have pursued a very different pattern than UK’s historic one in replacing their longtime head coaches.

When Roy Williams gave up the Tar Heels coaching job in 2021, UNC elevated his assistant, Hubert Davis. Since the iconic Dean Smith retired in 1997, all four subsequent UNC head men have come from the “Carolina family.”

Once Mike Krzyzewski decided to exit as Duke head man after the 2021-22 season, the Blue Devils search appeared to be limited to Coach K’s coaching tree. Ultimately, Duke elevated assistant Jon Scheyer to the top spot.

Rather than star chasing, could Kentucky seek to develop its own replacement for Calipari?

Among the dwindling number of ex-UK players in major college head coaching jobs, BYU’s Mark Pope is the most successful. But Pope, who has two NCAA Tournament trips and no Big Dance wins, needs more postseason success to be a viable candidate at Kentucky.

The justly maligned Calipari coaching tree has yielded only one sustained success — Morehead State’s Preston Spradlin. In theory, the former UK aide would need to make an intervening head coaching move to a larger school and continue to succeed to be worthy of Kentucky consideration.

However, what if UK brought Spradlin back as, say, associate head coach and put him in charge of “fixing” Kentucky’s struggling defense? Could he earn his way into UK head-coaching consideration by succeeding at that?

Finally, at age 28, Tyler Ulis has spent the past two seasons on the Kentucky bench as a student assistant while the former NBA point guard finishes his college degree.

Beloved by UK fans from his Wildcats playing days and a person with immense leadership qualities, could Ulis, after first becoming a full-time Kentucky assistant, then emerge with further experience as a home-grown Wildcats head-coaching candidate like Davis at UNC and Scheyer at Duke?

“Developing a head man” would be a radical departure from how UK has historically filled its men’s basketball coaching position.

What seems certain is that the task of hiring the next men’s basketball coach at Kentucky is coming soon. UK needs to have a well-thought-out plan for that day now.

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