Seven Days, Four Men, One Coach - a look back 19 years later

The following telling of the hiring of Bill Self to replace Roy Williams is from the 2003-04-27 edition of The Lawrence Journal World.
It is reprinted below in its entirety in case the link to it ever breaks down.

As a preface to set the stage:

In 2003 Kansas Men's Basketball Coach Roy Williams was not happy with several things at KU.

For starters his old friend and Athletic Director Bob Frederick, The Man Who Took A Chance on Ol' Roy in 1988 when Roy was pretty much a nobody in major college basketball national news, had retired in 2001 after 14 years as the KU AD. In his place was new Athletic Director Al Bohl. Brought in by Chancellor Robert Hemenway for his football focus, Bohl later become infamous for being less than personable. And to be fair to Roy, history has shown that Bohl was indeed a problematic individual and that Roy was just one of many KANSAS Athletics coaches and staff who were not happy with Bohl.

Roy's good friend and KU Football Head Coach Terry Allen had been fired by Bohl in the Fall of 2001 and later replaced by Mark Mangino.

And the talk was that Bohl foolishly ignored Roy, the guy in charge of the Jewel of Kansas Athletics, when it came to looking to the future of Kansas Athletics. Bohl was brought in to make the football program viable, and that was his focus. He wasn't worried about KU Men's Basketball or Roy Williams.

Then the Matt Doherty situation at North Carolina blew up, and for the second time in 3 years former UNC Head Coach and KU alumnus Dean Smith jumped in to assist UNC AD Dick Baddour in pitching his former assistant to return home to take over and right the ship of UNC men's hoops.

In the meantime Chancellor Hemenway, in a failing effort to save the situation, fired Bohl less than 48 hours after KANSAS had lost to Syracuse in the National Championship game. Hemenway wanted to show support for Roy and express his desire that Roy stay at KANSAS. These were the events leading up to the historic Bohl comment about Roy holding him in his hands like a dove and choosing to crush Bohl. "He had the choice," Bohl stated, "to either crush me with his power of influence, or let me fly with my visions for a better total program. He chose to crush me."
KUSports.com: Al Bohl’s driveway: a year later - by Chuck Woodling April 7, 2004

Of course we know that Roy left, Chancellor Hemenway hired KU alumnus Drue Jennings to serve as the interim AD until a new person could be found, and "oh, yeah, while you're in the chair -- how about finding a new head coach for one of the most successful and perhaps the most prestigious and historic college basketball programs in the country?" -- and Bill replaced Roy. And what Chuck Woodling did not know in April 2004 when he wrote the aforementioned Bohl retrospective a year after those events was how successful Roy would be at UNC, or how successful Bill would be at KANSAS.

Here is Chuck's telling of the tale of how Bill Self came to KANSAS.

KUSports.com:
Seven days, four men, one coach
How the week from Williams' departure to Self's arrival went down
by Chuck Woodling
Sunday, April 27, 2003

They said it couldn't be done. They said Kansas University could not hire a new men's basketball coach in less than a week.

They were wrong.

Thanks to cell-phone technology, lawyers working Easter Sunday and an 11th-hour acquisition of a booster's jet, KU officials had Bill Self in Lawrence just six days after first contacting him.

Why the rush to replace Roy Williams?

"It was mainly for the players' sake," KU interim athletic director Drue Jennings said. "Our team had played for the national championship and lost. Then they lost their coach. Our kids were psychologically bruised. The longer it was left open the greater the kids would be devastated and lose faith in the department and the university."

On Monday, April 14, Jennings watched Roy Williams' late-night North Carolina news conference on television. On Tuesday morning, he went to work to find a replacement.

Tuesday, April 15
Jennings places a call to the University General Counsel office.

"The first thing I had to do was learn the business repercussions of Roy's departure -- what do we need to do to deal with automobiles and cell phones, etc. -- because I had to have a frame of reference of what it would take to get another coach," Jennings said.

That done, the search begins in earnest.

"We got all that pieced together and then began to scratch our heads," Jennings recalled.
The other head scratchers were senior staffers Richard Konzem and Doug Vance.

"We had what I called a 'chalk talk' every morning," Jennings said. "I was usually here before 7 a.m. I would talk to the chancellor for a debriefing and by 8:30 or so, Doug and Richard and I were ready for the chalk talk."

They talk about names of potential candidates and about people they need to consult about those candidates. The original list, Jennings said, contains "a dozen or so names."

Early in the afternoon, Jennings speaks at a media session in Hadl Auditorium outlining the plan of attack and announcing that Vance and Konzem will be his aides. They will confer daily with Chancellor Robert Hemenway.

After briefing the media, Jennings, Vance and Konzem go back to their head-scratching.

"By the end of the day, we had a list of people we'd like to contact," Jennings said. "Then we identified four we would like to interview."

Three are contacted by Tuesday night. The fourth is apparently Self because he later said his first conversation about the opening was "... Wednesday for maybe 10 minutes."

Self had attended Illinois University's basketball recognition dinner Tuesday night, then he and his wife and two children flew to Miami, Fla., Wednesday for a long-awaited getaway. "It wasn't much of a vacation," Self quipped later. "It was basically a very expensive flight."

Wednesday, April 16
As it was Tuesday, Jennings talks to the chancellor, then conducts his chalk-talk session with Vance and Konzem.
They begin the laborious process of conducting telephone interviews with the four candidates. Self is one, of course, and Wichita State's Mark Turgeon is another. Jennings has declined to name the other two.
[From another source it seems the other two candidates interviewed were Marquette's Tom Crean and Oregon's Ernie Kent. - HE]

Self is interviewed via speaker phone for about 90 minutes that evening.

"Bill was our first choice," Jennings said.

Thursday, April 17
Again, Jennings phones the chancellor and meets with Konzem and Vance. Telephone interviews continue, including a five-minute session between Hemenway and Self.

Much of the activity this day is devoted to KU men's basketball awards ceremony at 7 p.m. at the Lied Center. Jennings is on the dais and speaks briefly. Afterward, he drives back to his office and conducts the last full-scale interview with a candidate.

"We had some pretty short nights," Jennings recalled. "Some nights we had just four hours of sleep."

Friday, April 18

Jennings tells the chancellor he believes Self is the man they should pursue. In talking to Self, Jennings says he senses Self really wants to come to Mount Oread.

"He had been here and he could smell Allen Fieldhouse kind of like a politician who goes to Washington and smells the Potomac," Jennings said. "I thought we should seize on that."

Hemenway agrees, so later in the morning they call Self, offer him the job and explain the contractual terms.

"When we finished, he felt it was a fair proposal," Jennings said. "We didn't blow him away. We didn't do a Kentucky with Tubby Smith. That (contractual) part was put to rest, but I could tell he was wrestling with non-financial things."

In the afternoon, Turgeon issues a statement saying he has decided to remain at Wichita State.

Self, who has flown back to Champaign a day early, promises he will get back to Jennings on Saturday morning.

Saturday, April 19
Hemenway is in Jennings' office early. They're awaiting Self's call before they go to the 10 a.m. dedication of the Anderson Family Strength and Conditioning Center.

Self calls and says he needs more time.

"I woke up Saturday morning ... I was going (to KU)," Self said later. "(Then) I talked to one person I totally respect ...and I wasn't going."

Because Jennings is an interim AD, Self asks for assurances from Hemenway that he will be there and that Self won't be stranded on an island with both an AD and a chancellor he doesn't know if he takes the KU job.

After the conversion ends, Hemenway and Jennings visit for an hour or so. Admittedly, they're worried.

"We talked about where we would go if Bill decided to stay at Illinois," Jennings said. "What's Plan B? We hoped to know by Saturday night."

About 8 p.m. Saturday, Self calls the chancellor, then Jennings. He's coming to Kansas.

"Bill said, 'I want to be a Jayhawk,'" Jennings recalled. "He gave me the name of his attorney in Tulsa so we could begin talking about the contract."

More wheels begin to turn. Jennings calls Konzem, who is speaking at the Kansas Relays alumni banquet in the Naismith Room, and tells him they need to set up a Sunday afternoon reception for Self and his family with the players, key administrators, coaches and members of the KU Athletic Corp. board.

Konzem asks Jay Hinrichs, head of the Williams Fund, to order the food. Then he sets up a telephone tree with staffers Janelle Martin and Gary Kempf. They decide to make the calls for the 2 p.m. reception just three hours beforehand.

"We were dealing with Easter Sunday issues," Konzem said.

Meanwhile, Jennings calls senior staffer John Hadl, who is having dinner in Kansas City, Mo., with boosters Ned and Jan Riss. Jennings needs an airplane to fly him to Champaign, Ill., to pick up Self and his family, and he has learned the university plane won't be available.

Earlier in the week, Perry and Todd Sutherland, a couple of long-time KU benefactors, had called and offered the use of their corporate jet, if needed.

"My phone book was in my car," Hadl recalled, "but Jan saved the day. She made some calls to find Perry's number. I finally got ahold of him, told him we needed the plane at 10 in the morning and he said he'd be ready at 9 a.m."

Sunday, April 20
It's Easter morning and Jennings is in the office of Barbara McCloud, the university's associate general counsel who is on the phone with Self's lawyer in Tulsa hammering out a preliminary agreement.

On Easter morning???

"Lawyers don't have calendars," said Jennings, smiling. Jennings is a graduate of KU's School of Law.

Jennings drives to Lawrence Municipal Airport, boards the Sutherland Lumber airplane and flies to the Champaign-Urbana airport where he picks up Self, his wife Cindy and children Lauren and Tyler.

Meanwhile, the Konzem-Martin-Kempf-Hinrichs calling tree is churning the phone lines.

At around 2 p.m., the chancellor -- and the media -- meet the Selfs at the Lawrence airport. The Selfs are whisked to the Naismith Room adjacent to Allen Fieldhouse for a reception with the invited players, administrators, coaches, etc.

In the meantime, the KU sports information office has announced a press conference has been scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday to introduce the new basketball coach.

"Bill didn't want a Sunday press conference because it was Easter," Jennings said, "and I was thankful for that."

After the reception, the Selfs are given a general tour of athletic facilities. About 5 p.m., Self decides he wants to make a tour of Lawrence with just his family, so Konzem gives him his car keys and off the Selfs go for about an hour and a half.

Then Self drops his family off at the Tuckaway Apartments on West Sixth Street, and returns to the fieldhouse where he conducts a meeting with KU's returning players at 9 p.m. that lasts more than an hour. Later, Self burns the midnight oil in his new office until about 2:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, Jennings had found time to celebrate Easter with his family.

"I was sitting in my office at six o'clock Sunday night and I realized I had about a two-hour lull, so I drove to my brother's house in Overland Park," he said. "They had already finished eating, but it was great. I got to see my family for the first time in a week."

Monday, April 21
A few hours shy of a week after Williams announced he was leaving for North Carolina, Self is introduced to the media, saying: "I woke up this morning and I was driving to the office. On purpose, I drove up Naismith Drive. I always thought, 'How cool would it be to have an office on Naismith Drive?' Now it actually gets to happen."

The clock is no longer running. Kansas has hired a new coach.
=========END OF ARTICLE=========

And Bill's first words when he put his hand on his new seat as the new Head Coach of Kansas Men's Basketball?

He smiled and said ""I just touched that chair and it already feels very hot!"
KUSports.com: First day in ‘hot seat’: Basketball coach Bill Self gets down to business - by Gary Bedore April 22, 2003

An addendum to the OP:

As noted in the OP, I have read (and not seen disputed by anyone) that the four interviewed finalists to replace Roy were Ernie Kent (then head coach at Oregon), Tom Crean (then HC at Marquette), Mark Turgeon (then HC at Wichita State) and Self. Apparently some BMD alums wanted Larry Brown back (a month later in May 2003 Brown resigned as HC of the 76ers and went on to win his only NBA title with the Pistons in 2004, his first season with Detroit), but Jennings said no to what surely would have been an NCAA attention getting hire.

All who supposedly had “ins” back then say Self was always the Prime Objective.

I do remember this.

In 2000 when Roy first considered leaving KU, Missouri was looking for a replacement for Norm Stewart.

They chose Coach K disciple Quinn Snyder.
They passed on the guy who traced his roots to Hank Iba, Eddie Sutton and Larry Brown, so he ended up at Illinois instead.

If Missouri had picked Self instead of Snyder...
1. Would Drue Jennings still have gone after Self?
2. Would Self had made an in-conference move to come to Kansas?

Thankfully this is just a horribly dystopic alternate reality scenario.