John Calipari once solved college basketball. With a lifetime contract, can he do it again?

It seems so mundane now, but at the time, it was outrageous.

When the NCAA first introduced the one-and-done rule, where elite high school basketball players would need to enroll in college (or at least take a year off) before declaring for the NBA Draft, college basketball was sent into a bit of a tailspin.

Coaches weren't sure how to react. Here they had spent years building their programs a certain way, targeting certain kind of recruits, spreading a narrative about what type of players they wanted, and all of a sudden the guys who had been jumping to the NBA from high school were now going to be coming to college … but for a year.

Could you even do anything in a year as a coach? Freshmen typically didn't play much back then, coaches believing they hadn't learned the system yet, but now top-level freshmen would be joining college hoops, and wanting to play immediately.

Many coaches balked.

John Calipari did not, and it rocketed him from being a successful college coach to the most important man in NCAA hoops.

On Tuesday, it was reported that the University of Kentucky had agreed with Calipari to a "lifetime" deal, effectively ensuring that he spends the rest of his career at the Wildcats.

Calipari was an innovator in college hoops. But as the rest of the world caught up, Kentucky has to ask: Can he do it again?

Before we get into how Coach Cal changed college basketball, it's important to remember the context and reality of NCAA hoops not even 20 years ago, and how the one-and-done rule totally threw college basketball coaches for a loop.

Top coaches had spent years "building programs," stressing to recruits that by coming to play for them the recruits would learn to play basketball the right way. The blueprint: Take recruits as freshman, build them up for several years, gradually letting them earn trust as they made better decisions. The recruits wouldn't play much as freshman, but that's because they had to learn the game, learn the way a team played. But, coaches promised, if the recruits gave them time, these coaches would build them into NBA-caliber players.

What was so brilliant about Calipari, then the head coach at Memphis, was that he understood, immediately and implicitly, that the one-and-done rule forever changed the model. If he was to get the top recruits in the country, he would need to change the messaging, change the narrative. Freshmen could no longer be brought in to "develop." If Calipari wanted to recruit with the Dukes and UNCs of the world, freshmen wouldn't be brought in to learn - he would build the team around them right away.

And so he did. While the rest of college basketball nervously figured out what it wanted to tell top young athletes, Calipari said bluntly: "Come, play for a year, go get drafted and make tons of money."

When Memphis stars Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans did just that, he didn't back away from them leaving, or try to hide behind it, he proudly used it as a recruiting tool: We had guys come for a year, and then we launched them on their careers.

It seems bizarre now, but at the time it seemed almost gauche. Here was someone who wasn't reinforcing college hoops' narratives about "building men." Instead he was saying "come play for a year, then go get that money."

It was wild. It was revolutionary. And it let Cal win. A lot. He made the Final Four with Memphis in 2008, then took Kentucky to four Final Fours in six years, winning a title in 2012.

Then everyone else caught up. Duke, holier-than-thou Duke, started embracing one-and-dones. Everyone did it. The narrative changed. Coaches stopped balking at the idea of bringing in kids for one year and, like Cal had almost instantly, embraced the idea.

It only took them a decade or so. But they got there.

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Now the question is: Is Calipari good enough to win when he doesn't have the ace up his sleeve? Can he beat the other top teams when he no longer has the advantage of going where none of them will go?

This is the question for Kentucky, and one I don't have the answer to. Though things seem like they're changing once again - the NBA looks like it will shelve the one-and-done rule and once again allow players to join the NBA right away, or at least the G-League, and start making money.

The seas are once again changing, and if Kentucky can feel good about one thing, it's that Calipari seems to have shown an instinct for where things are going, and a willingness to adapt instantaneously, while the rest of college hoops gets its legs under them. From that standpoint, a lifetime contract isn't so dangerous. Calipari has always been willing to adapt.