Let the Rumors Swirl, But Here’s Why Bruce Pearl in Louisville Wouldn’t Make Sense

By:
On:
In: Pearl marketing

It makes perfect sense why the connection was made.

On Tuesday, we found out that Chris Mack and Louisville would be on the verge of parting ways after a bizarre 4-year run as Cardinals head coach. Shortly after this information was published, Bruce Pearl was trending on Twitter.

To be fair, part of the reason Pearl might have tended was the fact that just a day after winning Auburn’s first No. of Mizzou in difficulty. But if you searched for Pearl’s name on Tuesday night, you saw dots connect everywhere between the historically successful program and the coach of that No. 1 first team.

For what it’s worth, Jones does a good job and while I don’t necessarily agree with all of his opinions, I don’t think he ever shoots from the hip with this stuff.

But is it really a fair composition? On the surface, perhaps. If you dig a little deeper, not so much.

If you’re going to poach a trainer, you need a definitive reason why the grass is greener. Let’s look beyond the fact that Louisville has 1 vacant national title in the past 35 years. According to the NCAA, Louisville and Auburn have the same number of national titles in this streak.

Speaking of that vacant title, Louisville continues to be a mess. He currently has an interim athletic director (Josh Heird) and he doesn’t have a college president after Neeli Bendapudi left to take the same role at Penn State. Something tells me that any Louisville pitch (made by who exactly?) at Pearl’s party will be a little different from this not-so-flattering reality of NCAA sanctions going forward:

Because who doesn’t like the words “potential sanctions” attached to a job description?

Pearl just got her own version of it in Auburn. In December, we found out that Pearl would receive a 2-game suspension following an NCAA infraction case involving former Auburn assistants receiving kickbacks for placing players with advisers. specific financials. This was after Auburn self-imposed a one-year postseason ban in 2020-21. The Tigers also got 4 years probation. But the good news? No additional postseason bans were added by the NCAA.

Here is Pearl’s statement following that announcement in December (H/T CBS Sports):

“I appreciate Auburn University, our leadership, the AU family, and our current and former student-athletes as we navigated the challenges of the past four years. We respect the NCAA peer review process and appreciate the panel acknowledging that we took meaningful and contemporary penalties. It’s time to put that behind us.

And to Auburn’s credit, that’s exactly what he did. It’s “putting that behind” them.

Pearl coaches the nation’s No. 1 team. The last time his team was cleared to the NCAA Tournament was a double blown dribble after earning a trip to the title game. Auburn’s 2021-22 squad, led by 5-star additions Jabari Smith (freshman) and Walker Kessler (transfer from UNC), might just make some more history.

But whether that happens or not, it’s clear that Pearl has recovered from the NCAA investigation and brought Auburn to a special place. A sold-out Saturday crowd for the showdown against Kentucky with admission prices around $350 would debunk any belief that Auburn “will always be just a football school.” And in case you forgot, Pearl made essentially the same money (about $4 million) as Mack did in Louisville.

Clearly, Louisville wouldn’t sue someone as highly regarded as Pearl without sweetening the deal in a major way. But how sweeter could this deal be, especially in the event that Louisville pays a good chunk of Mack’s $12 million buyout? Are we talking about John Calipari’s $8 million a year money? I guess it’s probably not in the cards to double the basketball coach’s contract in Louisville.

Let’s go back to this Calipari composition. When he leaves Memphis for Kentucky, he is 50 years old. And when did Calipari leave Memphis? Months after the university received its notice of allegations for a fraudulent SAT score from Memphis star and former No. 1 pick Derrick Rose. The notice of allegations was made public in May…2 months after Calipari accepted the job to become Kentucky’s coach.

This moment is a little different than Pearl’s, who will be 62 when the first round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament kicks off. What must Pearl escape? And if Pearl wanted to leave for an important job, which would have been absolutely possible in the past 4 years, don’t you think he would have gotten away when Auburn learned that NCAA sanctions were on the way?

Also, he’s not coaching in Conference USA like Calipari was. Pearl isn’t in his 40s like Chris Beard, who left Texas Tech for a richer, bigger program like Texas. It’s not Porter Moser, who left the Missouri Valley Conference to become Oklahoma’s head coach.

Meet Pearl, who has spent the last 8 years turning Auburn into a crazy basketball school that sells out all its games:

This fanbase worships Pearl, and understandably so. As the football program receives annual reminders that it is not on par with Alabama and Georgia, Pearl is trying to win either the conference regular season title or the tournament title. conference for the third time in 5 years. A school that pays a football coach $23 million to leave after an SEC-winning season will spare no expense to keep Pearl.

Unless the Northeast native has a lifelong desire to coach in the ACC, it’s hard to imagine a world in which Pearl would leave Auburn for Louisville. Maybe it would be a different story if we were talking about Duke or UNC.

We are not, however. It’s Louisville, which seems like a shell of itself.

And Auburn, well, it’s anything but that right now.