Basketball, football or something different?

Is your favorite Southeastern Conference program a football school or a basketball school?

This question is asked after a dustup of sorts at the University of Kentucky that was prompted by an interesting quote from men’s basketball coach John Calipari on Thursday.

The incident began with Coach Cal publicly lobbying for a new basketball practice facility as only he can, rightly pointing out that UK has recently spent millions to upgrade football facilities and those of several nonrevenue sports, with the school supposedly ignoring his pleas for the basketball facility.

But then he took it about three steps too far.

“The reason (we need a new practice facility) is, this is a basketball school,” he said. “It’s always been that. Alabama is a football school. So is Georgia. No disrespect to our football team. I hope they win 10 games and go to bowls. At the end of the day, that makes my job easier and it makes the job of all of us easier. But this is a basketball school.”

(Side note: Like every other SEC school, Kentucky plays 12 regular-season football games a year. Doesn’t Cal want them to win all 12?)

That said, Calipari is right from a historical perspective. UK is a basketball school, having won the second-most NCAA titles (eight),

having won at least one under five different coaches — only two other schools (Kansas and North Carolina) can count as many as three coaches who have won titles — and having won those eight titles in five different decades, same as North Carolina’s six total crowns.

But it could also be argued that UK football has been better than hoops of late, winning 10 games twice in the past four years and winning four straight bowl games while the basketball team went 9-16 two seasons ago and lost to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in last spring’s NCAA tournament.

No wonder Wildcats football coach Mark Stoops took offense, tweeting “Basketball school? I thought we competed in the SEC?”

In light of all this, your humble scribe couldn’t help but wonder which other SEC schools — besides Bama and Georgia in football, of course — should consider themselves one or the other. Or maybe something else, given that Vanderbilt has won an NCAA baseball crown twice in the past 10 years (2014, 2019), while Mississippi State won the College World Series last year and Ole Miss won it this year.

To do this, we’re going to come up with something vaguely, very vaguely, approaching a formula. We’re going to study the past 10 seasons for every school in the league. To be considered either a basketball or football school (or both), you can’t have more than one losing season over the past decade. For football, you also have to have at least two top-10 rankings in the final Associated Press poll over that period, play in at least two New Year’s Day or later bowls and post three seasons with 10 or more wins. For basketball, the same lone losing season rule applies. You must also have reached at least two NCAA tourney Sweet 16s, reached the NCAA tourney no fewer than five of the 10 years in question and won 25 games at least three times.

At the end, we’ll rank the top league schools in each sport using those guidelines. National titles will also be considered.

So who qualifies in basketball? Try Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Who’s in for football? Alabama, of course. And Georgia. And LSU. A fourth that just missed? Texas A&M. The Aggies had no losing seasons, but they also had just one 10-win year.

After that, ranking the four basketball schools would be as one might expect: Kentucky (eight 25-win seasons, seven top- 10 rankings, three Final Fours and one NCAA title); Florida (one Final Four, four Elite Eights, seven NCAA tourneys, four 25-win seasons); Arkansas (two Elite Eights, four 25-win seasons, five NCAA tourneys); Tennessee (three 25-win seasons, two Sweet 16s, five NCAA tourneys).

And football? C’mon. There’s Bama: four national titles, 10 AP top-10 finishes and 10 seasons of 11 or more wins. Then, way back, Georgia’s a distant second: one natty, seven seasons with

10 or more wins and seven top-10 finishes. LSU also has a national title but just four 10-win seasons and two top10 finishes.

And to defend Calipari on facts rather than public relations, notice there’s no crossover with the above schools. None of the basketball schools had only one losing football season over the past decade. None of the football schools had five NCAA tourney appearances in the past 10 years.

Admittedly, studying 10 years only leaves out a lot of good work in both sports. For instance, how many folks who don’t live and die with Florida football know that the Gators — who have won three national championships since 1996 — have had three losing seasons in the past decade?

Or that Auburn and South Carolina, both Final Four teams in the past decade, have endured six (Auburn) and four (South Carolina) losing seasons over the past 10 years.

Where you are now is not where you’ll be 10 years from now, though it’s hard to see Alabama football or Kentucky basketball being close to irrelevant for more than a season or two for as long as they continue playing those sports.

Nevertheless, if for no other reason than athletic departments are supposed to pull together, all for one and one for all, Calipari might want to far more carefully choose his words in the future regarding UK football.

Unless, of course, he wants to read a few more tweets like this one from former Kentucky punter Max Duffy: “Completely out of the blue question, but has the Kentucky football team ever lost to St. Peters?”