Pressure, (noun), the burden of physical or mental distress; the constraint of circumstance: the weight of social or economic imposition.

When doing a few searches on the internet for synonyms of pressure or to be more exact, “social pressure”, a few of the words that came up included but are not limited to the following; compulsion, urgency, persuasion, stress, affliction, coercion, trouble, hardship, humiliation, misfortune, repression and unnaturalness just to name a few. If three or more of these words can be used at any place in your job description, I encourage you to start updating your resume as soon as you are done reading this blog. I have had a few jobs that fall into this category including my last one, which for the better part of the last two years I searched desperately for a way out. With that being said, I was not working under a contract that guaranteed me 35 million dollars over the course of the next eight years, making me the highest paid person in my profession.

The most interesting side story in college basketball this March was that one of the nation’s best college basketball coaches was being wooed by one of the most storied basketball programs in the entire country. The University of Kentucky boosters made it very clear that not only was recently fired coach Billy Gillispie not the man for the job but that there are very few men in this country who are qualified for or even worthy enough to be asked to coach the men’s Wildcat basketball team. The list of candidates was short, sweet and sexy. It started and ended with Memphis Tigers coach John Calipari, whose record over the last nine years is an astounding 253-68.

Great coaches have a fairly equal balance of the following three skills; game management, game preparation and recruiting. It has become clearer in recent years that having the ability to convince some of the nation’s top talent to go to your school is the crucial ingredient to having a successful college basketball program. At Memphis, Calipari had two of the top four recruits next season. This would be a remarkable number at any school but at Memphis it is simply amazing. Granted, the Tigers are the most major mid-major but they are still just that. A mid-major. No titles. Very few big NBA names, (Anfernee Hardaway and Derrick Rose). Very few national celebrities, (Fred Thompson of Law and Order fame and former U.S. Senator and of course Wink Martendale). But despite being in a non-BCS conference and having to compete against schools on the recruitment trail that have much more to offer including exposure and tradition, Calipari has won consistently for close to a decade.

In a meeting with his players to discuss the opportunity that was in front of him, the coach, whose team was prematurely dismissed from this year’s NCAA tournament, compared the Kentucky basketball program to Notre Dame football. He didn’t need to say more than that as his players knew that much like how they wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to get drafted in the NBA lottery, there coach couldn’t turn down one of the greatest coaching jobs in the country.

This seems to be a perfect fit. There are very few coaches that are big enough, let alone available, to coach at Kentucky. At the same time there are very few programs that are big enough for a coach with the resume, skills and relative youth that John Calipari encompasses. By hiring this years Sports Illustrated Coach of the Year, Kentucky will not only find themselves as favorites in the SEC next year, they should end up in the national title hunt on a regular basis within two or three years. This is not an exaggeration. It is an expectation. Coach Cal will not only bring over some of his top recruits for the 2009-2010 season but you would have to imagine that this would be the tipping point for a plethora of high school juniors and seniors for years to come. Memphis may be bumped off some radars all together and Rick Pitino’s job of getting the in-state talent to avoid Lexington for Louisville will get much more difficult if and when the deal goes through.

I have never been to the Blue Grass State but I have seen the Kentucky boosters in their element. In 1996, then coach Pitino and the Wildcats had what is considered one of the greatest college basketball teams of all time. In the Final Four, the fat cats sporting their oversized fur coats and smoking their victory cigars, strutted the streets of Minneapolis yelling obscenities at Wake fans stating that, “Tiny Tim Duncan couldn’t handle Kentucky basketball!” Ever since then, I have enjoyed watching the Wildcats lose. But now it has gone too far. Rock bottom for the UK faithful is not making the tournament, which is something that happened for the first time this season in nearly two decades. If things go according to plan, this won’t happen again for at least another twenty years. Despite my disgust with Kentucky basketball, it will be a good thing for everyone who enjoys college basketball to see them rise to the top once again. We need teams that we love to hate and it is simply too difficult to hate a team that is just average at best. Getting back to the Notre Dame comparison, you can look at the Irish football program as a perfect example of this.

You want to talk about pressure? As long as Calipari is in charge of the Wildcats, pressure is what will be placed on the east coach blue-chippers who are debating what school will be the best place to fine tune their skills before jumping to the NBA. If you didn’t enjoy watching UK in the NIT, don’t worry. Now that the largest coaching contract in the history of college basketball is agreed to this week, you won’t have to worry about the Wildcats receiving an invitation for that tournament any time soon.