With Billy Gillispie getting canned by Kentucky yesterday, you figure he would’ve just packed up quietly and headed out of Dodge. After all, this was supposed to be a bitter, miserable guy who didn’t like anything about being in Lexington (if ESPN’s Pat Forde is to be believed). Well, does this look like that guy?:

(The 6-million-dollar smile?)

Gillispie held a 30-minute press conference in a Lexington hotel in which he cracked jokes and acted like he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe he’s just relieved to be out from under all the pressure. Perhaps he thinks that Jeanine Edwards might return his phone calls now. The most likely reason for his new sunny disposition, though, is that he seems to think that he’ll be getting $6 million to not coach the team, no questions asked — even though he never actually signed his contract. The university, shockingly, isn’t going to cooperate with that.

Gillispie contends that the “memo of understanding” he signed that outlined his compensation is enough to get his full buyout:

Gillispie believes he’s due the full amount.

“That’s what it says in the contract, that’s what it looks like to me,” he said. “I don’t know all the details and all those kind of things. I just know we signed a contract. It was a shorter version than maybe some.”

I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to pretend to know the difference between a memo and a full contract, but my assumption is that the memo would’ve been called a contract if that’s what it really was. Kentucky is saying that they have no intention of paying the buyout that was in the unsigned contract. According the LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL:

“There were issues that were mentioned in the memorandum of understanding that were never completed because a full contract was never completed,” Todd said. “We don’t have a completed contract that was long term.”

However, the memorandum does not state that it is a year-to-year contract.

“That’s an interpretation,” Todd said. “We’ll have to let lawyers get specific about that.”

One lawyer who’s going to get specific about it is Gillispie’s. So says KENTUCKYSPORTS.COM:

When asked if he’d be willing to go to court to force UK to pay Gillispie the $6 million buyout specified in the memo, Campbell said, “It’s what I do for a living . . . I’m an attorney and I litigate.”

Gillispie said today that he “likes” UK AD Mitch Barnhart, who didn’t exactly go out of his way to compliment Gillispie’s personality in yesterday’s university press conference. But the two are clearly on different pages over what Gillispie is owed. And I can’t imagine that UK is going to want to drag this out when they’re trying to hire a new coach.

As for that new coach? Despite a “down” year in the swamp, Billy Donovan has said he’s not going anywhere, especially since it would require written permission from his AD to look for other employment.  Other rumored candidates are Tom Izzo (really?) and John Calipari (makes a little more sense).