Hall of Fame to fix mistake on Bill Self tribute bench

By Matt Tait     Sep 7, 2017

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The Bill Self bench outside the entrance to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has one small mistake that the Hall says soon will be fixed.

Of all of the great tributes to Bill Self that the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has rolled out, one left Kansas basketball fans frustrated on Thursday.

Outside of the main entrance to the Hall of Fame, just before reaching a statue of James Naismith, visitors encounter a walkway with several stone benches honoring the coaches who are in the Hall of Fame.

Larry Brown has one. Roy Williams has one. And now Bill Self has one, too.

Carved into the top of the benches, where people presumably would sit, are the coaches’ names and signatures, the class they went in with, the honorees they selected to be named — most often family members or mentors — and a section at the bottom that lists all of the schools that are most important to them.

For Self, who starred at Edmond (Okla.) High before going on to play at Oklahoma State, both of those schools are on there, along with the four schools at which Self has been a head coach — Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas.

One problem. Where it lists Kansas, it reads, “Kansas University” instead of the University of Kansas.

With KU fans taking to social media to voice their displeasure, one KU official reached out to the Hall of Fame to inform it of the error.

The KU official told the Journal-World that the Hall of Fame regretted the mistake and promised to correct it as soon as possible.

All’s well that ends well. And, hey, it’s not like they spelled it “Bill Slef” on the KU coach’s official portrait or got the man the wrong jacket size.

Everything about the Hall of Fame and this induction experience has been first class and there’s no doubting that the bench will be fixed soon.

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.