This post from a couple of weeks ago observed the following about then Texas A&M University basketball coach Billy Gillispie:

. . . Aggie basketball coach Billy Clyde Gillispie is the toast of Aggieland and he is getting noticed nationwide. This NY Times profile does a good job of describing this somewhat peculiar character — a pure Texas gym rat basketball coach in the middle of football country. Although Kentucky is now looking for a new coach, my sense is that they need not bother calling Gillispie, who appears to be quite comfortable in Aggieland.

Well, that was two weeks ago. Yesterday, good ol’ boy Billy Clyde’s strong affinity for Texas evaporated under the heat of a $16 million contract that the University of Kentucky threw at him. No word on whether a horse farm was thrown into the deal for good measure.
Gillispie’s decision to leave emerging basketball power Texas A&M for Kentucky is understandable, given the money and UK’s legacy in college basketball. But one has to wonder whether Gillispie is making a wise move from a career standpoint. At A&M, he would always be the man that transformed the basketball program into the top-tier of major college basketball and soon would have all the resources that UK offers. Moreover, things have changed over the past decade or so in the college basketball landscape — Kentucky is no longer the dominant force that it once was. Perhaps Gillispie can return UK to its glory days, but the program is running behind two programs — Florida and Tennessee — in its own conference, and neither of the coaches at those programs appear to be going anywhere soon.
Finally, channeling the absurdity noted in the previous post from yesterday, UK would have paid even more for its new coach than the $16 mil that it is doling out to Gillispie — Billy Clyde was UK’s third choice (after Florida’s Billy Donovan and UT’s Barnes)!
Update: The Chronicle’s John Lopez reports that A&M’s loss of Gillispie may have been the result of A&M AD Bill Byrne’s inept handling of the situation.