Instead, he’s a football fan who as an assistant basketball coach at Oklahoma State had the pleasure of watching the great Barry Sanders play for his school, Oklahoma State. Self thoroughly enjoyed watching Todd Reesing scramble his way to passing records and winning records.

The football fan in Self is just one reason he would like to see Kansas football climb its way out of the abyss and finally figure out how to play with the big boys of the Big 12. Beyond that, Self would love to show off to basketball recruits a rowdy student section at a packed Memorial Stadium.

And then there is the issue of conference affiliation, bound to resurface in a few years. Big-time conferences want more than one of the top handful of basketball programs in the nation. They want decent football programs, too.

Self gets all of that. I’m not sure his thousands of loyal followers always do. That’s fine because if Kansas builds a football program and a stadium, or at least makes extensive renovations, the fans will come.

The one who has to get the importance of football is the successor to chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, who announced Thursday that she will step down next summer.

The next chancellor should make the football program a major priority from Day 1 and start by deciding whether the right athletic director to put football on a successful track is in place or must be replaced. Obviously, current AD Sheahon Zenger can’t be given another chance to hire a football coach if David Beaty doesn’t show signs of turning the tide.

The new chancellor must resist the temptation to want in his or her AD someone easy to work with, happy to revel in basketball’s dominance and willing to try to get by on the cheap with football.

Instead, Gray-Little’s successor should want an AD who will incessantly push for big-time financial support from the university while simultaneously convincing the donors who only want to back basketball that the best way to do so is to pony up for football.

The money is there, it just needs to be coaxed toward football.

KU Endowment’s “Far Above: The Campaign for Kansas,” raised a stunning $1.66 billion, or more than two thousand times the amount of money the school pays its head football coach, David Beaty. Surely, some of that can be spent.

Don’t believe me? Then you didn’t read the piece from Paula Lavigne of ESPN.com on finances in college athletics. It breaks down revenues by sport and school.

Kansas, which has won 12 Big 12 titles in a row, made $19,144,222, in basketball revenue during the 2014-15 school year, according to the data in the report. Even with a football program on the skids, Kansas made $25,986,540 in football revenues.

Another way of looking at the numbers: Kansas State generated more revenue in football alone ($46,345,877) than Kansas did in football and basketball combined ($45,130,762).

Before Bill Snyder, an assistant coach from Iowa, came to Manhattan and did the impossible, K-State football was in even worse shape than today’s Kansas football. It can be done, but not without the next chancellor showing enough strength to make pro-football decisions that might rankle faculty and some alumni.

The next chancellor must energize Kansas football the way Jon Wefald did at Kansas State.

This is a crucial hire for not just the university as a whole, but for Kansas athletics.