Mike Yoder/Journal-World PhotoThey said it couldn’t be done. They said Kansas University could not hire a new men’s basketball coach in less than a week.
They were wrong.
Thanks to cell-phone technology, lawyers working Easter Sunday and an 11th-hour acquisition of a booster’s jet, KU officials had Bill Self in Lawrence just six days after first contacting him.
Why the rush to replace Roy Williams?
“It was mainly for the players’ sake,” KU interim athletic director Drue Jennings said. “Our team had played for the national championship and lost. Then they lost their coach. Our kids were psychologically bruised. The longer it was left open the greater the kids would be devastated and lose faith in the department and the university.”
AP File PhotoOn Monday, April 14, Jennings watched Roy Williams’ late-night North Carolina news conference on television. On Tuesday morning, he went to work to find a replacement.
Jennings places a call to the University General Counsel office.
“The first thing I had to do was learn the business repercussions of Roy’s departure — what do we need to do to deal with automobiles and cell phones, etc. — because I had to have a frame of reference of what it would take to get another coach,” Jennings said.
That done, the search begins in earnest.
“We got all that pieced together and then began to scratch our heads,” Jennings recalled.
AP File PhotoThe other head scratchers were senior staffers Richard Konzem and Doug Vance.
“We had what I called a ‘chalk talk’ every morning,” Jennings said. “I was usually here before 7 a.m. I would talk to the chancellor for a debriefing and by 8:30 or so, Doug and Richard and I were ready for the chalk talk.”
They talk about names of potential candidates and about people they need to consult about those candidates. The original list, Jennings said, contains “a dozen or so names.”
Early in the afternoon, Jennings speaks at a media session in Hadl Auditorium outlining the plan of attack and announcing that Vance and Konzem will be his aides. They will confer daily with Chancellor Robert Hemenway.
After briefing the media, Jennings, Vance and Konzem go back to their head-scratching.
“By the end of the day, we had a list of people we’d like to contact,” Jennings said. “Then we identified four we would like to interview.”
Three are contacted by Tuesday night. The fourth is apparently Self because he later said his first conversation about the opening was “… Wednesday for maybe 10 minutes.”
| Drue Jennings,interim athletic director
Robert Hemenway,chancellor Richard Konzem,associate AD/administration Doug Vance,associate AD/communications |
Self had attended Illinois University’s basketball recognition dinner Tuesday night, then he and his wife and two children flew to Miami, Fla., Wednesday for a long-awaited getaway.
“It wasn’t much of a vacation,” Self quipped later. “It was basically a very expensive flight.”
As it was Tuesday, Jennings talks to the chancellor, then conducts his chalk-talk session with Vance and Konzem.
They begin the laborious process of conducting telephone interviews with the four candidates. Self is one, of course, and Wichita State’s Mark Turgeon is another. Jennings has declined to name the other two.
Self is interviewed via speaker phone for about 90 minutes that evening.
“Bill was our first choice,” Jennings said.
Again, Jennings phones the chancellor and meets with Konzem and Vance. Telephone interviews continue, including a five-minute session between Hemenway and Self.
Much of the activity this day is devoted to KU men’s basketball awards ceremony at 7 p.m. at the Lied Center. Jennings is on the dais and speaks briefly. Afterward, he drives back to his office and conducts the last full-scale interview with a candidate.
“We had some pretty short nights,” Jennings recalled. “Some nights we had just four hours of sleep.”
Jennings tells the chancellor he believes Self is the man they should pursue. In talking to Self, Jennings says he senses Self really wants to come to Mount Oread.
“He had been here and he could smell Allen Fieldhouse kind of like a politician who goes to Washington and smells the Potomac,” Jennings said. “I thought we should seize on that.”
Hemenway agrees, so later in the morning they call Self, offer him the job and explain the contractual terms.
“When we finished, he felt it was a fair proposal,” Jennings said. “We didn’t blow him away. We didn’t do a Kentucky with Tubby Smith. That (contractual) part was put to rest, but I could tell he was wrestling with non-financial things.”
In the afternoon, Turgeon issues a statement saying he has decided to remain at Wichita State.
Self, who has flown back to Champaign a day early, promises he will get back to Jennings on Saturday morning.
Hemenway is in Jennings’ office early. They’re awaiting Self’s call before they go to the 10 a.m. dedication of the Anderson Family Strength and Conditioning Center.
Self calls and says he needs more time.
“I woke up Saturday morning … I was going (to KU),” Self said later. “(Then) I talked to one person I totally respect …and I wasn’t going.”
Because Jennings is an interim AD, Self asks for assurances from Hemenway that he will be there and that Self won’t be stranded on an island with both an AD and a chancellor he doesn’t know if he takes the KU job.
After the conversion ends, Hemenway and Jennings visit for an hour or so. Admittedly, they’re worried.
“We talked about where we would go if Bill decided to stay at Illinois,” Jennings said. “What’s Plan B? We hoped to know by Saturday night.”
About 8 p.m. Saturday, Self calls the chancellor, then Jennings. He’s coming to Kansas.
“Bill said, ‘I want to be a Jayhawk,'” Jennings recalled. “He gave me the name of his attorney in Tulsa so we could begin talking about the contract.”
More wheels begin to turn. Jennings calls Konzem, who is speaking at the Kansas Relays alumni banquet in the Naismith Room, and tells him they need to set up a Sunday afternoon reception for Self and his family with the players, key administrators, coaches and members of the KU Athletic Corp. board.
Konzem asks Jay Hinrichs, head of the Williams Fund, to order the food. Then he sets up a telephone tree with staffers Janelle Martin and Gary Kempf. They decide to make the calls for the 2 p.m. reception just three hours beforehand.
“We were dealing with Easter Sunday issues,” Konzem said.
Meanwhile, Jennings calls senior staffer John Hadl, who is having dinner in Kansas City, Mo., with boosters Ned and Jan Riss. Jennings needs an airplane to fly him to Champaign, Ill., to pick up Self and his family, and he has learned the university plane won’t be available.
Earlier in the week, Perry and Todd Sutherland, a couple of long-time KU benefactors, had called and offered the use of their corporate jet, if needed.
“My phone book was in my car,” Hadl recalled, “but Jan saved the day. She made some calls to find Perry’s number. I finally got ahold of him, told him we needed the plane at 10 in the morning and he said he’d be ready at 9 a.m.”
It’s Easter morning and Jennings is in the office of Barbara McCloud, the university’s associate general counsel who is on the phone with Self’s lawyer in Tulsa hammering out a preliminary agreement.
On Easter morning???
“Lawyers don’t have calendars,” said Jennings, smiling. Jennings is a graduate of KU’s School of Law.
Jennings drives to Lawrence Municipal Airport, boards the Sutherland Lumber airplane and flies to the Champaign-Urbana airport where he picks up Self, his wife Cindy and children Lauren and Tyler.
Meanwhile, the Konzem-Martin-Kempf-Hinrichs calling tree is churning the phone lines.
At around 2 p.m., the chancellor — and the media — meet the Selfs at the Lawrence airport. The Selfs are whisked to the Naismith Room adjacent to Allen Fieldhouse for a reception with the invited players, administrators, coaches, etc.
In the meantime, the KU sports information office has announced a press conference has been scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday to introduce the new basketball coach.
“Bill didn’t want a Sunday press conference because it was Easter,” Jennings said, “and I was thankful for that.”
After the reception, the Selfs are given a general tour of athletic facilities. About 5 p.m., Self decides he wants to make a tour of Lawrence with just his family, so Konzem gives him his car keys and off the Selfs go for about an hour and a half.
Then Self drops his family off at the Tuckaway Apartments on West Sixth Street, and returns to the fieldhouse where he conducts a meeting with KU’s returning players at 9 p.m. that lasts more than an hour. Later, Self burns the midnight oil in his new office until about 2:30 a.m.
Meanwhile, Jennings had found time to celebrate Easter with his family.
“I was sitting in my office at six o’clock Sunday night and I realized I had about a two-hour lull, so I drove to my brother’s house in Overland Park,” he said. “They had already finished eating, but it was great. I got to see my family for the first time in a week.”
A few hours shy of a week after Williams announced he was leaving for North Carolina, Self is introduced to the media, saying: “I woke up this morning and I was driving to the office. On purpose, I drove up Naismith Drive. I always thought, ‘How cool would it be to have an office on Naismith Drive?’ Now it actually gets to happen.”
The clock is no longer running. Kansas has hired a new coach.
