Bill Self seemed to be in a great mood for the three days of the recent Big 12 meetings in Arizona — and with good reason.
The Kansas men’s basketball coach had just won his second NCAA championship a month earlier, when the Jayhawks beat North Carolina, 72-69, in New Orleans. The championship came despite a more than a 900-day investigation into the Kansas program by the NCAA, one that is still ongoing.
At 59, Self is on top of his game and is arguably the top active men’s basketball coach with the retirements of Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright. He recently told ESPN Radio that “I plan on being around a while.”
He recently answered questions from a small group of reporters in Scottsdale, Ariz., ranging from the Big 12′s future with four new additions coming on board, on the complexities of NIL and what winning the national title meant.
— Q: What’s the feeling with Texas and Oklahoma still around despite announcing their exit?
— Self: That’s kind of worn off, to be honest with you. There’s absolutely no feelings, zero, of animosity or anything like that with the coaches or administrators. We were all disappointed when those two made the decision to go somewhere else but on the flipside I think the Big 12 will have our struggles ahead of us but I think we’ll survive. We’ll be fine. From a competitive standpoint, I think the teams that we’ve added certainly add competitive value.
— Q: You’re in the best men’s basketball conference in the country right now. The numbers say you’ll still be the best conference in the country once Oklahoma and Texas leave and BYU, Cincinnati, Central Florida and Houston join.
— Self: Oh, I think so. I think if you took us out … that it can still be the most competitive conference. So the reasons we’re the best league is because you’ve got many schools … but nine out of the 10 have been to Sweet 16 or Elite Eight in my tenure here or whatever. So it’s not going anywhere.
— Q: You’re obviously familiar with Houston coach Kelvin Sampson and what they’re doing down there. Along those lines, what about adding a quality team as well as Cincinnati, with what they’ve done …
— Self: Well Cincinnati and BYU may have as big a sleeping giant possibility as anybody. Central Florida will be a great add. They were one possession away from beating Zion [Williamson] and Duke three years ago. Adding Houston I think will be a good add. Certainly the interest level from what I’ve been told, since Kelvin has been there’s been so high and the city is excited. Houston deserves to have a good basketball program with all the history. Kelvin is bringing it to them. There isn’t a basketball coach that gets their teams to play harder than Kelvin.
— Q: TCU coach Jamie Dixon said that when everything is settled, and you have 12 members, he would still like to see a round-robin schedule.
— Self: Jamie may but that would be 22 games and 22 games is a lot of games. I’m not going to disagree with Jamie because when you play an exempt tournament, and then the Big East Challenge and the SEC Challenge and a good home-and-home, there’s no other games to play. So I think that may be a little much. I hope it stays around the 18 number.
— Q: How are you dealing with NIL at Kansas?
— Self: I think some universities are ahead of others in how much they’ve embraced it. State laws, I think university policies, many things have a lot to do with that. I know that we’re for our players doing as well as they possibly can, but it’s still uncharted waters for everybody. It’s real. It’s not going away. It’s very, very nervous to coaches because we like dealing in exacts. This is like putting your arm around a cloud. I don’t know anybody is going to be able to get a total feel on where this is across America until it has some time to play out because it changes daily.
— Q: What was the national championship like? Not you first rodeo but still …
— Self: Well, it’s been great. It’s been on cloud nine. This one to me probably actually meant more personally because of some different things that have been going on in our lives. The wins never feel as good as the losses feel bad except that one. Then you can add them all up and that win feels better than all the losses.
— Q: Not that you needed it but is there any vindication in this title?
— Self: I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I think as good as we’ve been over time — and I’ve said this multiple times you would think even though 99 percent of all programs out there would love to have the success we’ve had in the NCAA Tournament — but when you have had that many good teams, you’d like to have hung more one banner. We haven’t run from that, but it’s true. When you’ve been a No. 1 seed as many times as we’ve been, you’d like to hang more one banner. It’s good we did that this year.
