Folks in Illinois, no doubt smarting about Kansas University’s highjacking of men’s basketball coach Bill Self, at least can rationalize they pocketed $500,000 from the deal.
Moreover, they can chortle that Kansas received absolutely no reparations from North Carolina after losing Roy Williams.
Why is it that Kansas has to pay a half million bucks to Illinois while North Carolina owes nothing, not even a player to be named later, to KU?
Fine print, that’s why. The five-year pact Self signed in December stipulated that if he left the school he would owe $100,000 for every year of the contract he didn’t fulfill. At the same time, Williams’ KU contract contained no such buyout clause.
Shouldn’t Kansas have had such a clause in Williams’ contract?
Drue Jennings, the Jayhawks’ interim athletic director, put it this way: “There’s no hindsight. I wouldn’t criticize that. I’m not sure buyout clauses mean all that much anyway. If somebody wants somebody, they’ll raise the money.”
Like Kansas decided to do in its pursuit of Self. Basically, KU didn’t wince about the high cost of doing business in a Steinbrenner-esque way to obtain one of the best available coaches in the country.
“It’ll be painful, but we can raise the money,” Jennings said.
Oh, and even though Jennings is not enamored with buyout clauses, he is duty-bound to include one in Self’s pact because of the historical imperative of Williams’ leaving for his alma mater. Self vowed Monday he considered Kansas a “career-ending job,” and that he isn’t interested in returning to alma mater Oklahoma State, but he did add with a smile: “I think contractually there will be some things to prevent that from happening.”
Self’s pact will not contain a codicil that specifically forbids Self from going to Oklahoma State, but, Jennings said, “There will be buyout parameters if he leaves.”
As the Journal-World reported Monday, Self agreed to a five-year contract that will be worth about $1.1 million a year. Only about $130,000 will come from state money. The rest will be supplied by the KU Athletic Corp., the school’s endowment association and benefactors.
How does Self’s contract compare to the one Williams gave up to go to North Carolina?
“I’d rather not compare it to Roy’s,” Jennings said. “But it’s not materially different.”
Williams’ total package has never been made public, but it’s believed he was pulling down close to $1.5 million a year based on the drawing power of his name in endorsements, clothing and shoe contracts and summer camps. For instance, Williams’ June youth instructional camps are sold out, but many of those campers’ parents will have the option to pull out because they wanted their children in Williams’ camp, not Self’s.
Regardless, Self will pocket more on Mount Oread than he did at Illinois, although not that much. Money always talks, of course, but when you have an opportunity to coach men’s basketball at Kansas — a tradition-rich school that has a job opening only once every 14 or 15 years — you shoot first and ask money questions later.
“This,” Self said, “is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
At the same time, KU officials felt Self was a one-in-a-million candidate, hiring him without a single face-to-face interview. All the dickering was done over the telephone. Another unusual aspect of the search was its speed. Under normal circumstances, Chancellor Robert Hemenway would have been announcing the members of his search committee Monday.
This was also the first search for an athletic department staffer in recent memory that didn’t include at least one person from the KUAC board, although Hemenway and Jennings kept in touch with John Ferraro, the board president.
“I talked to all the members of the board,” Ferraro said, “and the only thing they recommended was that they consider an African-American candidate, and I forwarded that to Drue, and he said he did that.”
Jennings reported he conducted interviews with candidates other than Self, but he declined to name them.
All in all, except for KU’s failure to include a buyout clause in Williams’ contract, this whole slam-bang affair has been handled swiftly, smartly and satisfactorily.
