"Yeah, it was my idea to fire Sean on April
Fool's Day. That way everyonr would wonder
if it was a joke. Speaking of jokes let's talk
about the search for a new basketball coach!"
In five seasons as the head basketball coach for the Kansas Jayhawks Bill Self has won games, four Big 12 titles and a national championship. Let's face it, he's the kind of guy just about any school would love to have coach their basketball team but only few would be qualified to employ him. Among the hundreds of schools that rank among the unqualified you'll find Bill Self's alma mater, the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
I'm not one to get into the great debate of where O-State's basketball program ranks nationally but I can say with all confidence that they aren't in the same class as the Kansas Jayhawks. In fact, the only other schools you'll find in that class are Duke, North Carolina and Indiana. Those are the jobs that any coach would leave their current position for without thinking twice.
Oklahoma State thought that they could play the "home" card and park a dump truck load of cash in front of Bill Self's house with a love note from Mike Holder and T. Boone saying, "there's more where this came from!" and Self would leave basketball Mecca for Stillwater.
"There was never serious interest on our part in leaving the University of Kansas, but there was serious interest in listening and helping Oklahoma State in a way that would put their basketball program in the position they want it to be in. We visited and slept on it and came to the conclusion that I felt all along that the time is right for my family to be in Lawrence, Kan., and lead this program, hopefully, to bigger and better things in the future."
Turns out that Self didn't have to leave Lawrence to become one of the highest coaches in the NCAA which sends OSU back to the drawing board but now with a slightly bigger problem. Self was their guy and they were prepared to pay an astronomical amount of money to get him. Now, unless they are going after Duke's Coach K, UNC's Roy Williams or Texas' Rick Barnes, they're not going to get a top tier coach like Self but they will have to explain to the candidates from the lower tier why they suddenly aren't willing to pay as much as was rumored.
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