Roy Williams and Bill Self are great people. Great college basketball coaches. One is a legend, a locked hall-of-famer. The other is a budding star, a success story in three previous coaching ventures. Both men truly care about their players; they honestly vow to make a lasting impact on their student-athletes.
Yet, both guys have been absolutely martyred by everyone from the media to the “Benedict Williams” shirt-wearing Kansas students to the “He only cares about himSelf” shirt-donning Illinois faithful.
Their complaints weren’t preposterous. How could these guys turn their backs on their players? How could they go back on their living-room promises? How could they be so greedy, chasing dollar signs instead of representing integrity?
OK, those are valid queries, but how about this question: How could they turn the jobs down?
Let’s see. Williams got to go home to the state he has spent all but 15 years of his life. His pockets got fatter. His family got happier. He got better golf courses to play. He got his dream job.
As for Self, he also got his dream job. His pockets also got fatter. He got to move from a top 20 school with minimal basketball tradition to one of the five most prestigious jobs in college basketball.
Both coaches bettered every part of their lives, financially and personally.
Yet, they’re villains, according to their previous school’s fans. They’re traitors. They have no integrity. They ran out in the middle of the night.
In Williams’ case, fans here couldn’t cope with the fact that Williams simply loved North Carolina more. In Self’s case, fans felt betrayed. Self promised a vision for the future and bolted right when the Illini were ready for a breakout year.
But, please, can we detach ourselves from the crazed fanaticism, people?
They moved jobs. It’s that simple. They saw more enticing opportunities in different situations. They can’t be blamed for that.
How many people climb the job ladder in this country? Wait, let’s rephrase that. How many people in this country wouldn’t climb the job ladder? Not many. In some regard, the system, the NCAA, must take blame for the ongoing coaching carousel around the nation. The NCAA has turned into a dollars and cents entity, not an association hell-bent on graduating student-athletes, as it would like you to believe.
There is no cap on coaching salaries. No limit for institutions searching to lure away coaching talent. Television revenues have transformed the sport, at least at the Division I level, into a semi-professional entertainment extravaganza.
Marquette coach Tom Crean, who was a top candidate to replace Self, re-injected a dose of faith into people who hoped coaches would follow their values at all costs. But even Crean’s move is up for inspection. He stayed at Marquette, but only after the university matched the kind of dough he’d be making if he had left the Golden Eagles for Illinois.
Bottom line, as long as the NCAA treats major college basketball as a money-making cash cow, as long as coaching salaries elevate to ridiculous amounts, coaches will continue to hop from one university to the next.
Which also means that recruits’ fathers like Pete Padgett will keep hearing false promises, like the one Williams issued about being in Lawrence all four years for Pete’s son David.
But it’s hard and surely not fair to point the finger at coaches like Williams and Self. They did care, and still do, for their ex-players. They just took better jobs, just like you and I would.
