Roy Williams is not a man to waffle. Roy Williams is not a man who doesn’t know who he is. Roy Williams is not a man who drags his feet.
And yet Roy Williams, the man who went from an obscure assistant coach at North Carolina to a household name at Kansas University, cannot decide if he wants to return to his alma mater or remain where he is regarded as a near-deity.
“I’m asking for patience,” Williams told a President Clinton-sized media session Friday night at the Parrott Athletic Complex. “I’m asking for the fans to have a little patience.”
But why? Why can’t he make a decision? Why is Williams procrastinating?
“To say I’m dragging it out,” Williams said, “I would disagree.”
Momentarily, Williams stated what is, when push comes to shove, the reason he must straddle the fence at least a little bit longer.
Call it the Thomas Wolfe Syndrome. Williams is concerned about going home again, and with good reason. It’s been a dozen years since he was at North Carolina and, he said, he’s not sure he’s been gone so long he won’t feel like a stranger in a strange land.
To be more specific, he needs to make sure he knows the people he’ll be working for.
Dick Baddour is North Carolina’s athletics director, and I’m certain Williams wants to know how much tar is on Baddour’s heels. In other words, how long will Baddour be there?
Baddour caught some flak last fall for retaining football coach Carl Torbush when the faithful were calling for Torbush’s removal. Torbush was the man Baddour picked to replace Mack Brown when Brown departed for the University of Texas, and it’s no secret if the UNC football team doesn’t improve this fall, Torbush could be gone and perhaps Baddour with him.
Then there’s the man-at-the-top factor. Jim Moeser will take over as UNC’s chancellor in August. Moeser, a former dean of KU’s School of Fine Arts, is chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Nebraska is, of course, a football school, leading to speculation North Carolina officials hired Moeser with a mandate to act decisively on football.
At the same time, Moeser has been at KU so he also knows what it takes to maintain a strong basketball program.
As you know, North Carolina coach Bill Guthridge announced his retirement on Friday, saying he lacked the energy to continue. Surely, Guthridge’s decision came after consultation with the legendary Dean Smith, his predecessor. After all, nothing happens in North Carolina basketball, it is widely believed, without Smith’s concurrence.
Still, I have to wonder if Moeser was somehow involved. Let’s face it, how often do coaches retire saying they lack energy? In contemporary times, 62 is hardly old age.
Did Moeser or Baddour or a few big cigars on Tobacco Road decide now was the time to ease Guthridge out and make a move to try to hire Roy Williams, that the longer Williams remained at Kansas the more difficult it would be to lure him away from Mount Oread?
What puzzles me were the reports Friday morning out of Chapel Hill that Williams would replace Guthridge. Several media agencies were involved, including The Associated Press, which normally is loathe to release speculation without solid, if unnamed, corroboration.
Williams termed those reports “completely false” and later referred to them as “irresponsible journalism.”
But did Williams tell someone back on Tobacco Road he would take the job, then change his mind later when he began to feel the first pangs of the Thomas Wolfe Syndrome?
After hearing Williams speak Friday night, I’m convinced he is genuinely torn about what to do. In the back of his mind, the North Carolina job was the one he always dreamed of. Williams will turn 50 a month from today and that’s not too old to dream, yet it’s also old enough to face reality.
It’s just possible North Carolina is not Nirvana, after all.
Perhaps Williams is struggling most of all with a sense that his destiny lies in Kansas, much like a transplanted Kansan named Dean Smith found his destiny in North Carolina.
