It's 5:41 a.m. when Rick Pitino arrives — four minutes early.

We shake hands and he swiftly enters the gym. By the time I'm checked in — less than two minutes later — Pitino is already on the elliptical machine, and he is pushing it. He does 45 minutes of cardio at the same  pace, covering more than six miles. He's 72 years old and I'm 29, and I'm having a hard time keeping up.

“After we won the 2013 championship [at Kentucky], I wrote a book called One Day Contract,” he tells me. “If you have one day to be judged as a person, as a coach... how good would you be in terms of signing a new contract? I try to live by that.”

Five decades into his Hall of Fame career, Pitino is still earning a new contract every day. And this one is just beginning.