Having covered dozens and dozens of news conferences in the past 45 years, Wednesday night's at Bud Walton was beyond compare.
John Calipari is the seventh Arkansas basketball coach to be covered along with 11 football coaches, so having the band, cheer and pom teams was nothing new.
Having some of the UA Board of Trustees on hand is not unusual.
Granted, having Johnny Tyson at a news conference is not the norm, but the appreciation he received for making it financially feasible to move the Arkansas Razorbacks up in the national spotlight was well-deserved.
While Cal is the most proven name hired at the UA, it was that on a rainy night Hog fans lined up long before the doors opened at 5 p.m., and they kept coming until the designated seating areas were full and the overflow was sent to the upper bowl.
This is just an eyeball estimate, but it appeared more than 5,000 came to call the Hogs and welcome the one coach they previously most wanted to beat every year.
Placards on every seat declared "CAL THOSE HOGS' on one side and listed a few of his accomplishments: 2012 NATIONAL CHAMPION; 4 No. 1 OVERALL PICKS; 6 FINAL FOURS; 27 TOP-15 PICKS; 41 FIRST-ROUND PICKS; 58 NBA DRAFT PICKS and the 2015 NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE.
In the world of perspiring arts that should be enough to survive a NCAA Tournament opening-round loss to Oakland when the team played as if its offense would be its defense.
Several times during the announcement Chuck Barrett, the voice of Razorback football and basketball, who was the master of ceremonies, stopped, stared up at the crowd and said, "Unbelievable."
Back in Lexington they were about to learn Baylor's Scott Drew was not interested in beating the big blue drum and that Billy Donovan was claiming he was committed to staying with the Chicago Bulls.
Coaching Kentucky really isn't every coach's dream. It is an elite program, no doubt about it, but it is a fishbowl existence. Every day is what Nolan Richardson once described as a drive-through period: You drive through to get food, drive through to pick up your laundry, etc.
It is almost, not quite, but almost like having 60,000 stalkers.
Not every coach could handle it. Eddie Sutton couldn't. Billy Gillespie couldn't. Tubby Smith did for a while.
Cal embraced it and controlled it.
Now he will find a different kind of fan, one who wants to win and not always expects it.
Who would appreciate 410 overall wins, a 198-65 SEC record and a 27-10 NCAA Tournament record.
There seemed to be a central theme from the announcement to the actual news conference -- players, he loves them and needs them.
Currently he has no scholarship players. He joked about meeting with the team before he took the stage -- all three of them and all are in the transfer portal.
As of today, Cal has 18 days to find players and the bet here is he'll get at least 10, maybe 12, and half will be blue-chippers.
It may take a couple of years before the Razorbacks are challenging Alabama and Tennessee for the SEC title, but they might be a little surprising next season and not a team to take lightly.
Cal is an expert at coaching freshmen.
In fact, he owned the one-and-done world until Mike Krzyzewski and Duke got into the fray and that changed the minds of a lot of schools.
The key to recruiting these days is NIL money and Cal wouldn't have jumped to a rival competitor unless that bank account was full.
Wednesday night was like a red-and-white gala. Now the sleeves go up and the work begins.