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SAN ANTONIO | OK, I may finally get what Kansas coach Bill Self has been trying to say all along. For the last few days, as talk about Oklahoma State oil money filled the basketball backrooms, Self had been oddly vague. It’s not like him to be vague.
Self kept saying that he would not allow the basketball opening at Oklahoma State to be a distraction. He kept saying that he loved Oklahoma State, his alma mater, but he would advise the Cowboys to look for a different sheriff. He kept saying that he has the greatest job and no interest in going anywhere. The only thing that Bill would not say is that single word Kansas people kept waiting to hear: No.
It all seemed confusing, especially for a man like Self, who gives the straightest answers in college basketball. On Tuesday, he was peppered with the same questions, and he said many of the same things. It finally hit me, though, that Bill was giving a straight answer.
He was saying this: It’s not up to Bill Self to say no.
It’s up to the University of Kansas to say no.
This did not come through for a while, I think, because the situation seemed bizarrely familiar. Five years earlier, Roy Williams went through almost precisely the same thing — a job opening at his alma mater during the Final Four. So strange. Of course, this was different. Oklahoma State has a good tradition, but it’s not North Carolina. Self cares a lot about Oklahoma State, no doubt, but it isn’t the wistful, middle-aged love that Roy had for the Tar Heels.
And this time around, the job seemed to revolve not around feelings and homecomings and saving the school but the cold hard cash of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, oil man, hedge-fund pioneer, wind farmer and apparent wooer of successful basketball coaches.
My first thought was that Self did not want the job, and he was not saying no out of respect for his old school. That seemed to fit his persona. Self is aware of the perceptions people have, and he had to figure that if he thoughtlessly dismissed the Cowboys, then it might rub a lot of his old Oklahoma friends wrong.
Then, when the money rumors started to lift higher than they’d ever been lifted before, I wondered whether maybe Self really did want the job. The money figures grew obscene. A $6 million dollar signing bonus? Four million per year for 10 years? A few hardened analysts and observers told me, “Oh, he’s gone — nobody turns down that kind of cash.”
On Tuesday, though, I heard something else. Bill Self does not want to leave Kansas. This is the best college job in the country for him. He knows it. He’s in the Midwest, where he has lived. He’s coach at the most historic basketball school in America (I’m not talking about “best,” I’m talking “historic” — what other school can claim the inventor of the game as coach and be ground zero for Kentucky and North Carolina basketball fathers Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith?).
Self’s at a school where he has a good shot at recruiting just about anybody — since the game began in 1977, only Duke, North Carolina and the NBA have gotten more McDonald’s All-Americans than Kansas.
He doesn’t want to leave. So why not shut down the rumors? Here’s why: He really does not know yet what Kansas is going to do for him. He just does not know. Self has only three years left on his contract. He’s reportedly getting paid less than football coach Mark Mangino — and while Mangino has been really good, Kansas football is not Kansas basketball.
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