Photo Credit: Arkansas Athletics / Auburn Athletics
With conference realignment throwing a wrench into everything, scheduling has become one of the most discussed topics in college athletics.
In addition to the usual high-profile non-conference matchups that elite football and basketball programs seek, teams now must travel across the country for conference games, too. Former Arkansas basketball coach Eric Musselman learned this the hard way when his USC Trojans had to travel all the way to the eastern seaboard to take on Rutgers in New Jersey last season.
Especially in college hoops, high-major programs are constantly looking for ways to make themselves as battle-tested as possible before March Madness. We saw that last season when the non-conference gauntlet Auburn and Florida faced prepared them for a loaded SEC slate, and their eventual Final Four runs in March Madness.
Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari knows the importance of a strong schedule all too well. His Kentucky teams regularly tested their mettle against other blue bloods in non-conference play. The same dynamic will play out this season, as Arkansas is set to face every team that made the Elite Eight last season in the upcoming campaign.
After the team’s first public practice of the season on Wednesday, Coach Cal expressed confidence in his team and said that he wouldn’t have assembled that murderers’ row if he didn’t think his team could handle it.
“Our strength to schedule wasn’t bad last year. But you schedule to your team,” he said. “You’ve got to look and say, ‘Ok, where are we? Is this too much for these guys?”
Probably one of, if not, my favorite moment from practice earlier today.
Both Billy Richmond and Trevon Brazile looked really good. Them passing with freshman Darius Acuff Jr., was awesome.
Capitalized with a nice finish from Billy! #WPS pic.twitter.com/wi4ylfLwa0
— Evan Kamikow (@emkamikow) July 9, 2025
It wasn’t too much for Auburn when it faced four top 10 teams in a month-long stretch of non-conference play. Those early heavyweight bouts helped Auburn thrive in a historically tough SEC and then reach the Final Four.
In addition to beefing up the non-conference schedule, Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl on Wednesday expressed support for the addition of a miniature summer league in college basketball, in the same vein as the NBA. Pearl also advocated for televising games when programs go on foreign tours. Arkansas took one of these tours under Musselman a few years ago, but the games were paywalled on the much-maligned FloSports app.
As Pearl said in his tweet, that’s an idea Coach Cal has been talking about for years. The Head Hog proposed this back in 2022 as a way to generate more revenue for NIL as well as allowing coaches to test their teams before the season started. It would also give fans something to cheer for during the sports dead period in late summer.
After Pearl’s recent tirade on Fox News, perhaps the Tigers could leave The Jungle behind and head to the desert for a game behind enemy lines in Tehran.
But while Calipari and Pearl agree on the topic of summer games, the Arkansas coach took things a step farther with a new idea.
John Calipari’s New Scheduling Proposal
At Wednesday’s presser, Coach Cal doubled down on the summer league idea in light of Pearl speaking out. But Calipari also introduced the concept of a preseason conference tournament for teams to get even sharper and more battle-tested earlier on.
“Do something prior to [the season] and everybody gets three games,” Calipari said. “Play your way out and do it in November and December. Start the season with it. Then when the season ends, it ends. Regular-season champ.”
It sounds like the Head Hog is advocating for the abolition of the SEC Tournament falling right after the regular season as we know it. Instead, this model would shift the college game to something similar to the NBA Cup, a midseason tournament involving a group stage and a knockout stage, almost like a World Cup format.
NBA teams have to win seven games to hoist the trophy. Calipari’s idea would be more abbreviated, though it’s hard to tell what format could work for this scheme.
If you stretched it out to four games, then a full-conference knockout tournament could happen in both the SEC and Big 12, the two best basketball leagues in the country. Each conference has 16 teams, so a single-elimination knockout tournament would require four games to win it all. In this case, teams could continue playing in a losers bracket to ensure they get the same amount of games.
This hypothetical change in format would take a few years to get used to, but may result in a better product in the long run than current conference tournaments, which for the most part end up being irrelevant filler games in between the regular season and the NCAA Tournament.
On the topic of the Big Dance, Calipari made a plea to college basketball administrators not to mess with the fan-favorite, 64-team knockout format. Expanding the NCAA Tournament has been a much-discussed idea among many big-wigs, including SEC commissioner Greg Sankey.
“Don’t screw it up,” Calipari said after an emphatic thumbs down motion. “Leave it alone.”
Update on Arkansas vs Memphis
Calipari has brought up the possibility of an exhibition game with Memphis multiple times in the last few months. On Wednesday, he again discussed how he’d like to have a charity match that would offer a chance for a reunion with some of his former players. Calipari coached the Tigers from 2000-09, winning seven conference titles and reaching three Elite Eights, plus a national runner-up finish.
“I had called Arthur Smith, Fred Smith’s son, who’s the offensive coordinator with the Steelers….
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