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Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari can only go so long without making a big headline.
This week, Cal is in Destin for the annual SEC Spring Meetings to discuss the state of the league, changing the SEC's perception and getting more teams into the NCAA Tournament among other topics.
On Wednesday, Cal hopped onto The Paul Finebaum Show and revealed some of the topics that were discussed in the meetings.
"There's a perception issue that becomes reality that we gotta deal with a little bit," Calipari said. "There's some scheduling issues that we have to deal with. We're trying to get from three to four teams to six or seven teams in the NCAA Tournament and have those teams advance. We're just trying to talk (about) ways of how we do this."
Cal also stressed the desire to see more transparency in the NCAA Tournament selection process so that every coach and player knows what their respective team must do to make the tournament and improve their seeding.
"I've said this over and over," Cal said, "if every decision we make is based on the kids, you're not going to make a bad decision."
All of that seems fair and reasonable to say, a far cry from the UK head man would say when it came to the SEC Tournament. Cal suggested an idea to move the league tournament to the preseason and have the league's regular-season champion earn the automatic bid to the Big Dance.
"How about we do this, let's go to Atlanta, get two sites, have a preseason tournament," Cal said. "Every team is guaranteed three games. The winners win the tournament. That's early November. Everybody knows we're all these teams, we're going to Atlanta and we're gonna have a ball. We're gonna play each other and we're not going to have a postseason tournament.
"And you know what? The team that wins the regular season gets the automatic bid (to the NCAA Tournament). You do that and maybe if there's a tie you do what the Ivy League does and play it off."
Cal then took to Twitter to expand on this idea, by suggesting that they hold that preseason tournament at the Georgia Dome and set up two courts for multiple games to be played at once.
I'm sure you've heard about my crazy idea for the SEC Tournament being played before the season. Got another crazy idea while I was driving.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) June 1, 2016
Why don't we play the games in the football stadium in Atlanta and set up two courts with stands split down the middle?
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) June 1, 2016
You could play the games where fans can go from side to side and watch multiple games.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) June 1, 2016
You could even have the winner's bracket on one court and the loser's bracket on the other court.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) June 1, 2016
It sounds like Cal wants the SEC Tournament to resemble more of a high school tournament, which actually seems fair given how irrelevant the league tourney has become in terms of seeding. Why not just make it a fun experience for fans if it's not going to do anything for a team's seeding in the Big Dance?