Mayer: Self’s charm helping fans forget seating fiasco

By Bill Mayer     Jan 1, 2005

Bill Self is a master at walking a tightrope. He does it with such grace, charm and style. The Suits at Allen Fieldhouse are smart enough to let him divert some of the heat from them.

If Self did not have a special ability to please people, he could have been drawn into the ongoing controversy about the point system and the ticket-assignment policy. That would have robbed energy from his main job — to make his team the best it can be. People appreciate his operation no matter where they are sitting, or aren’t, and don’t blame Bill, who was hired by Drue Jennings, by the way.

Things have quieted down a bit regarding the seating situation and the money-raising tactics for Kansas University sports. A number of people I know with longtime allegiances to the Jayhawks either have turned back their tickets because they can’t afford the heavy renewal lug or have resold them and invested in bigger and better television sets.

What happens, though, if KU starts to black out some home games on a pay-per-view basis? There’d still be free big-network stuff, but what about lesser games with smaller nets?

One long-termer said he went to a couple of games to see where the new guys had put him and his wife, didn’t like it and dumped the ducats. Others who may be in or near the places where they once were are saddened by their lack of familiarity with those around them.

Lots of old combos of diehard fans have been scattered. Worse, surroundings change from game to game.

“I can’t help wondering if people are passing tickets around, privately or corporately. Lots of strange, changing faces,” one seat-holder said. “In so many cases, the old familiarity is faded or lost and people don’t get into the action like they used to. Bill Self said one night he didn’t think the crowd was as supportive as usual. Could be there are too many strangers who haven’t caught the fever and don’t know each other well enough to work up a Crimson and Blue sweat.”

But coach Self keeps charming them out of the trees. Lordy, in working for the evolution of a title-winning team through intelligent design, Bill’s even going to satisfy the Bible-toters, science aficionados and the in-betweeners who are about the embark on another ridiculous “education” journey.

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That Thursday Journal-World photo of Jayhawk Keith Langford ensconced among a group of adoring holiday clinic kids was a delight to behold. Many things about college sports have changed, a lot for the worse, but youngsters still go nuts at the prospect of talking and associating with personalities such as Langford.

You can bet your boots that many of those youngsters left the local clinic and couldn’t wait to tell somebody how they’d talked to Keith, got a hug from Aaron Miles, had Danny Manning show them how to free throw or drew a smile from coach Self. They’ll relish and remember that for a long time. Further, seniors like Langford, Miles, Michael Lee and Wayne Simien have been around enough to recognize their impact and enjoy it more than ever.

“Our players certainly have personality. The guys that enjoy it the most are the older guys. … I think they feel good about themselves when they do something like this,” Self said.

And there are the autographs, for free. Many topflight athletes shake their heads in disgust when they hear about modern money-grubbers who charge for their signatures. Former baseballer Russ Derry, onetime big leaguer who died the past year in Kansas City, was always appalled at the pay-for-sig trend.

It’s refreshing and heartwarming to see kids admiring and eager to associate with Jayhawks. It serves to remind the players they are, or should be, role models and that they should act as such, no matter what Butterball Charles Barkley says.

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In all the talk about college football coaches who have left for jobs in the pros, we hear a lot about Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson, Bud Wilkinson, Butch Davis, Dennis Erickson, Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier and their ilk. How come none of the scribes ever mention Missouri’s Dan Devine? Dan went 27-3-1 at Arizona State, 93-37-7 at Missouri then got fired by the Green Bay Packers after a 25-28-4 mark from 1971 to 1975.

Resilient, though. He then shifted to Notre Dame, had a five-year mark of 53-16-1 and won the 1977 national college championship. Two of his stars were Joe Montana and Bob Golic.

Dan loved to play the role of victim. He sometimes talked about how irate Green Bay fans killed his dog and hung it from a tree in his yard in protest. Not quite, says Harmon Wages. Wages rode the Florida bench as a quarterback behind Steve Spurrier, was briefly an Atlanta Falcon running back, then entered broadcasting. Outspoken, colorful.

Wages says that what really happened was that Devine had a home next to a guy who ran a poultry business and that Dan’s dog periodically raided the coop. The chicken guy finally told Devine that if “that damned dog” hits me again, he’s history. He did, and he soon was.

Apparently the neighbor shot the dog and strung him up to make his point. Devine didn’t tear the world apart as a pro coach, but, according to Wages, it was the chicken-house attacks rather than his Green Bay losses that led to Nippy in a Noose.

Dan died in 2002 at age 77 after winding up a long and productive career as MU athletic director in 1994.

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