North Carolina head coach Roy Williams is seen in the stands at the championship game between Kansas and Memphis at the NCAA college basketball Final Four Monday, April 7, 2008, in San Antonio. (AP Photo)
HE SAT THERE in the crowd at the Alamodome, grinning, with a big Jayhawk sticker on his sweater.
Roy Williams was watching his old team put away the favorite, Memphis, for the NCAA championship. He looked relaxed. He looked happy.
Just two days before, the Jayhawks had ended Williams’ hopes for another championship for his North Carolina Tarheels. But Monday night, there was no room for regrets. The coach was watching his other favorite team — the one he had lived with night and day for 15 years — make its dreams come true.
It is time to forgive Roy Williams. He broke the hearts of Kansas fans five years ago when he heeded the siren song of his home state. Kansas fans did not just like Roy Williams. They loved him. When he left, they felt betrayed and abandoned. The hurt was so great that Williams’ successor, Bill Self, had not only to mend a broken team, but also to woo and win a fan base that was determined to never give its heart so easily again.
Did Williams make the right decision five years ago? Only he knows for sure. But had he stayed at Kansas, he could have built a tradition to rival that of Dean Smith at North Carolina. At North Carolina, which takes a more pragmatic view of its coaches, Roy will be forever “One of Dean’s boys” and spend his career in the shadow of his legendary mentor.
You can go home again, but you have to pay a price.
Whatever that price was for Roy Williams, he has paid it. And the image of him cheering on the Jayhawks at Monday’s game made it clear that Kansas still holds a place of honor in his heart.
It is time for Kansans to recognize the affection they still have for Williams and to heal those old divisions. In coming weeks, Kansas may have to go through it all again.
It is no secret that T. Boone Pickens University (it used to be known as Oklahoma State University) is determined to buy back its alumnus, Bill Self. Pickens has all the money in the world. Word has it that he will offer Self a $6 million signing bonus and $3.5 million a year to take the school back to its former glory.
Self faces a hard choice — be his own man at Kansas for less money or go home a rich hero and a wholly owned subsidiary of T. Boone Pickens and Big Oil.
We hope he stays at Kansas. He’s a good man and a good coach.
And in Kansas, he’ll never stand in anyone’s shadow.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor
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