Amid NCAA’s uncertain future, Kansas basketball coach Bill Self shares his perspective
LAWRENCE — The seemingly, ever-changing world of college athletics often leads to conversations about who should be involved in the discussions to find solutions, to find some clarity in a path forward.
Administrators make one group to pull from. Athletes provide another. And coaches shouldn’t be forgotten, either.
But while Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self said Thursday that 10 years ago he would have liked to be included, his outlook has changed. Last year, the NCAA infractions case that loomed over his program for about half a decade, that saw final penalties — including the removal of a 2018 Final Four banner, probation and more — that were fare less severe than first suggested, resolved. The experience created so much angst and frustration, Self explained, that now he’s at a point where he’d rather be told what the rules are and then adjust from there.
“Would I like to be on the forefront of making decisions?” Self said. “In theory, I think I’ve got some good ideas. But I don’t think that I’m going to go lobby before Congress to come up and figure out, ‘Hey, what do you think, Self, on how this?’ — That’s not going to happen, and certainly with what I’ve gone through the first five years they’re not going to ask me anyway. So, I’m not going to spend a lot of time worrying about some crap that they’re not even going to ask me about.”
Self acknowledged that outlook might be a sad thing to say, but noted it’s how he honestly feels.
While he left open the possibility of sharing his thoughts with someone at the level of U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, who Self said has asked before, he has no interest in working arm-in-arm with the NCAA to fix things. Self seemed far more optimistic when he talked about the future of the sport, going as far as to say everything will get figured out.
Self added the current state of affairs is at a point where everything across college athletics is “up in the air.” Like any business, he mused, it’s a situation where how things look now aren’t going to be how they look five years from now. Although he didn’t provide specifics at the same level he did college athletics, and could have been naming the first industries that came to mind, he brought up the pharmaceutical and trucking industries as ones that have also gone through change in recent years.
One of the more prominent pieces of recent news that led to this discussion with Self was the ruling that allowed the Dartmouth men’s basketball team to move toward unionization. Self cautioned that he’s not as up to speed on the ruling as some might be, but noted there are a lot of people on the administrative side of things in the industry who think that’s the direction things are moving.
It’s not just unionization that’s a topic that’s on his mind, but employee status, Title IX and the name, image and likeness (NIL) space.
“I think it’s so up in the air and so indecisive that it makes it hard for people to operate, not knowing certain things,” Self said. “You’ve got the Tennessee situation still out there, and that’ll certainly impact NIL moving forward depending on what that ruling is. And so, it’s just like — it’d be nice in two years from now or three years for now that it’s actually settled down and this is exactly how we know it’s going to be.”
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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas basketball coach Bill Self speaks on NCAA's uncertain future
