Tom Keegan: Money doesn’t make up for losses

By Tom Keegan     Jan 28, 2016

Mike Yoder
Kansas coach Bill Self and the Jayhawks bench watch the closing minutes of the Jayhawks 74-63 loss to the Mountaineers at the WVU Colliseum in Morgantown, W.V. Tuesday.

The lack of money can buy misery to someone carrying great responsibilities. A surplus of cash can ease stress, but it can’t buy happiness.

Kentucky coach John Calipari is in the second season of a seven-year, $52.5 million contract. That’s $7.5 million a year.

Kansas coach Bill Self is in the fourth season of a 10-year deal that guarantees him nearly $50 million, plus incentives.

Barring a classic game along the lines of the Oklahoma-Kansas game the Jayhawks won 109-106 early this month in Allen Fieldhouse, one of the coaches will head home in a miserable mood. The sweet sound of jingling pockets won’t bring him any cheer.

The top of the coaching profession offers a most handsome living, but it sure can bring some ugly nights. The less experience coaches have at losing, the tougher it is to remove the stink of defeat from their minds.

These two men seldom lose. Calipari has a 206-42 record at Kentucky, an .831 winning percentage. Self is 368-82 at Kansas, an .818 success rate.

For comparison purposes, consider that Baylor’s Scott Drew has coached the Bears to the Elite Eight twice. He has coached nine games in Allen Fieldhouse. Self has coached 209 games in the building named after the father of modern coaching, Phog Allen. Drew and Self have lost the same number of games (nine) in the building. Self’s 200-9 record computes to a .957 winning percentage. Calipari is 114-4 in Rupp Arena, a .967 success rate. Drew’s Baylor Bears remain the only team outside of the SEC to pin a loss on Calipari in Rupp.

The more a coach wins, the deeper the losses sting. The bigger the job and paycheck, the greater the responsibilities.

At the Final Four in San Antonio, a friend suggested I ask Calipari about sleeping on a cot he had claimed in Allen Fieldhouse.

He looked so happy reflecting on his years (1982-85) as an assistant coach under Ted Owens and Larry Brown.

“I had just gotten to Lawrence,” Calipari said. “They were throwing these cots away because the whole Allen Fieldhouse was a triage, so it was filled with cots. So I didn’t have a bed. (Someone said) ‘They’re throwing these out. Take one of these.’ I got the wide cot. I had to put a piece of wood under it. That was my first bed.”

It wouldn’t do now. You lug around the pressure these guys do every day and you need a more comfortable place to rest your weary back.

“But I’m telling you,” Calipari said, “it was the best time of my life. I had no worries. I had no money. I had a car. We had different places we ate on different days ’cause it was the cheapest place to go. You know, it was just fun. I mean, it was a fun time.”

Hustle your way to the top. Then when you get there, try to figure out a way to enjoy it a much as when you were rolling coins and taking them to the bank so you could afford to buy some hamburger meat to keep that lonesome ketchup bottle company in the fridge. Tough challenge for anybody in any profession.

Calipari and Self have different styles. Self leads with charm, Calipari with his chin. Wildly competitive juices drive both men. They compete for too many elite recruits and in games on stages so large — each won a national title at the other’s expense — that it’s not surprising they can’t just turn off the enemy switch and flip on the friend one.

“Cal and I are fine, very cordial and all that stuff,” Self said when asked about their relationship. “We haven’t broken bread together lately at dinner, but I don’t do that a lot with a lot of coaches. But I would welcome it. I don’t have any issues with Cal whatsoever.”

How much the two coaches like each other is anybody’s guess, but it would be nearly impossible for them not to have a great deal of respect for each other. They both know too well how difficult a job each has and how well each multi-tasks under intense scrutiny and pressure.

“I think he’s done a remarkably great job at a place that is not an easy place to coach,” Self said. “I think people look at Kansas and Kentucky and Carolina and Duke, and there are more blue-blood schools out there. And you just think, ‘You should win. You’re at these places.’ And that is partly true, but there are a lot of different type waters you have to navigate in order to make it a pretty smooth place. He’s done an unbelievable job of doing that at Kentucky.”

As has Self at Kansas.

Only one of the winners will win Saturday night. So many will wonder why the other man didn’t win and expect him to be ready with an explanation that covers all bases, even though some games played by mostly teenagers defy explanation.

“I’ve been doing this for 13 years here and 23 years total and the best shoot-around we ever had before a game was at TCU three years ago,” Self said, referencing a 62-55 road loss to TCU, as talent-challenged as any Big 12 team ever. “Never missed a shot. We were perfect.”

And then imperfection, an unforgivable human condition at places such as Kansas and Kentucky, had the nerve to make a rude, most untimely appearance.

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