Why I'm Still Mad at Roy Williams

For those of you who don’t know (which is to say everybody), I am a fan of the University of Kansas. A big fan. I wish I could afford season tickets to see my beloved Jayhawks play basketball but I have to feed the kids and keep the electric bill paid. So, I content myself with season tickets for football and a game or two at Allen Fieldhouse every season and the rest I watch on TV. It’s a very bog deal when the KU game is on hi-def. As you might expect, I am trembling with excitement about this weekend’s Final Four. I will be rooting for KU to win it all and I will especially be rooting for KU during the Saturday game with North Carolina.

As you may know, North Carolina is coached by Roy Williams a man formerly held in high esteem by KU fans everywhere and who is now somewhat vilified by a significant section of the KU population. Ever since KU and UNC made the Final Four we have been treated to a non-stop barrage of stories about Roy Williams and Kansas and why KU fans need to get over it. We have heard from Williams’ friends, former players and even a few “average” fans. To me, none of the articles seem to “get” the point about Roy Williams and his connection to KU. What follows is my opinion and I don’t know how many people agree with me or even if anyone does at all.

I am one of the people who is still angry with Roy Williams. I don’t hold the vitriol for him that so many people seem to have but I am also not yet at the “let bygones be bygones” stage with Roy. I would have to say that I am somewhere in the middle. I am softening somewhat on Roy but every time I read some story where some close friend of his tells me that I need to get over it, I get angry all over again. Roy isn’t helping this with his constant line about giving his “heart, body and soul” to KU either.

Before I get to explaining why I think about Roy the way I do, I think a little history lesson might be in order. Roy Williams came to KU on the heels of Larry Brown, a short-tenured but highly successful coach who, in a five year span, went to two Final Fours, won one NCAA championship and produced an All-American and player of the year. Larry Brown was completely beloved in Lawrence his entire time. He made Kansas basketball relevant one more time and he restored a proud and historical program. Keep in mind, before Brown, KU was coached by James Naismith who, in a stunning bit of irony remains the only KU coach with a career losing record. KU had won an NCAA championship under Phog Allen, the father of Basketball Coaching and had possibly the game’s most dominant player ever, Wilt Chamberlain. Under Ted Owns, Larry Brown’s predecessor, KU had some significant success but also had eventually fallen off the pace of the other blueblood basketball programs.

While Larry Brown brought back the swagger, KU was forced to confront Larry’s penchant for moving al over the place. He was a true itinerant coach. From the moment he arrived at KU we were force fed the idea that Larry Brown would eventually leave us. We loved Larry Brown and, despite the fact that he put KU on NCAA probation that prevented us from defending our national title, he is still a hero to many, myself included. The entire time Brown was here KU fans only wanted to hear him profess that he loved us as much as we loved him. He never did. While he has recently admitted that he regrets having left KU and still has a great deal of affection for the place, the fact remains that at the time, Brown didn’t return to us the love we gave him. All KU fans wanted was our own Dean Smith, our own Jon Wooden, our own Adolph Rupp. Yes, we did have Phog Allen but he was finished coaching before I was even born and I don’t have any memories of him at all. We wanted that coach who gave us the same undying affection we would give him. We wanted that guy who was identified as and synonymous with “Kansas Basketball.” Sadly, Larry never gave it to us but he did win us a national championship before leaving KU on probation. Despite this, he is still largely revered as a hero at KU and no one begrudges him his itinerant ways. Besides, no one can say we didn’t know what we were getting when we hired him.

Into this arena steps Roy Williams and he is an overnight sensation. He is an immediate success at KU. Despite the fact that he had never been anything other than an assistant for Dean Smith at North Carolina, KU hired him and KU fell in love with him. He won, he was dignified, he was classy and he was charming.
Still, Roy never gave us that unconditional declaration of affection we KU fans were after. Every year it seemed that one program or another called Roy to gauge his interest in taking their job. Some of those jobs would be seen as “inferior.” I recall once that the University of Tennessee called Roy to see if they could tempt him. He practically had a standing offer from the Los Angeles Lakers to take over as their coach anytime he wanted the job. I recall once, on Roy’s weekly call-in show, a woman asking Coach Williams why he always listened to those job offers and why didn’t he just tell the world that he wasn’t interested in leaving KU. Roy’s answer was eminently reasonable and he said that he owed it to himself and his family to listen to anyone who wanted to talk to him. While he couldn’t imagine a situation that would be better than what he had at KU, he would be a fool to not at least listen to what the other job had to offer. While KU didn’t like to hear this sort of thing, no one could deny that he was being reasonable and, besides, he said he loved KU, even if he didn’t say he would stay forever.

One other thing we had to constantly deal with as a result of Roy’s success was the constant barrage of calls that Roy Williams would replace Dean Smith the second Dean decided to retire from North Carolina. Roy used to shrug this off by remarking that the man who replaced Dean Smith at North Carolina is a fool and, UNC defused the situation when Dean retired by announcing that assistant coach Bill Guthridge would take over immediately as Dean’s replacement so there was no great public gnashing of teeth over what would happen next. But a few years later Guthridge retired and everyone knew that Roy was going to be the target.

And he was. UNC came after Roy like a lion after a limping gazelle. And Roy listened. And he thought. And he thought some more. Meanwhile, the entire city of Lawrence, Kansas threw a huge love-in for Roy. People pasted notes to the windows of Allen Fieldhouse, sent him flowers and loving emails, publicly begged him to stay. After about a week of being told how great he was, Roy Williams decided to stay at KU. While doing so he also said that he was never going through this again and that the next time he had a press conference to announce career plans it would be to announce his retirement or that he had been fired.

The celebration in Lawrence was enormous. The outpouring of love had finally been reciprocated. We had our Dean Smith/John Wooden/Mike Krzyzewski-type coach. Roy would be associated with Kansas basketball forever. God damn we were happy. After years of Larry Brown’s roving eye and twelve more of Roy taking calls from the Lakers and other colleges, we knew we had our man for good and forever. No more worries about North Carolina stealing our coach or the Lakers buying him out from under us. He had just said what we had wanted to hear years before he ever even got to Lawrence.

Of course, as we know now, it didn’t last. The Tar Heels hired Matt Doherty who came in and recruited brilliantly but was too much of a disciplinarian for a lot of his players. Three years later, in response to a player revolt, North Carolina fired Matt Doherty. During that three years, the Athletic Director who hired Roy to come to KU retired and KU went out and hired a search firm that recommended that KU hire a dithering idiot, Al Bohl, as the new AD. From the beginning Roy, by all appearances, hated Bohl. Roy, who could have had anything he wanted, did not request a space on the search committee and he did not make much input into the decision on the new AD.

Despite Roy’s promises of eternal fidelity, it was obvious that the new vacancy at North Carolina represented a real threat to keeping Roy at Kansas. In response to this, and knowing that Roy had become unhappy with how things had become in the Athletic Department, KU fired Bohl, signaling that it wanted to keep Roy Williams happy at KU. Nevertheless, UNC aggressively wooed Roy Williams and finally hired him, about one week after Roy had KU appearing in the NCAA championship game. Immediately following the game Roy had famously said that he didn’t “give a shit about North Carolina.”
As you can imagine, there were, and are, a lot of hurt feelings in Lawrence. Benedict Williams t-shirts started appearing and a lot of anguish was expressed by KU fans. Additionally, there was some taunting of KU by North Carolina fans. It was a very difficult time for KU fans everywhere. We felt as if we had been punched in the gut. It was as if we had been dumped by our one true love who also told us that she would love us forever. Or some other metaphor.

Shortly thereafter KU hired Bill Self away from Illinois, inducing a similarly anguished reaction from Illini fans all over the county. Bill Self as gone on to be a great success at KU and I, like most other KU fans are grateful he is here with us.

But this upcoming Final Four has a lot of people anguishing over Roy yet again. We have multiple stores by the national media quoting Roy’s friends and former players telling people with hurt feelings to get over it. They all talk about this and ask who has never changed jobs? Who has never moved? They remind us that Roy was from North Carolina and that he had family there and he wanted to be close to them. And they are right. All of those things are true. Roy did and does have the right to take any job he wants for any reason he wants and those reasons are valid.

At the same time, I get pissed off at Roy every time he gets on television to tell people that he was treated harshly by KU and that for fifteen years he “gave [his] heart, body and soul” to KU and how special he thinks it is. It’s like Roy doesn’t realize that he did make promises to KU. They were, admittedly, promises he didn’t have to honor and may have even had good reasons to go back on but that doesn’t mean that his doing so didn’t hurt. He can talk all he wants about how much he still loves KU and how we’re still his second favorite team, but the fact of the matter is that he told us what we wanted to hear and that we believed. And when he exercised the right to change his mind, he thinks that the pain we felt is somehow not reasonable.

I want to make it clear: Roy Williams had every right to do what he wanted and he had every right to change his mind and his job. But I will also maintain that we KU fans had every reason to feel hurt by Roy’s actions. It may not be fair, but Roy isn’t dealing with only his legacy, he is also dealing with that o Larry brown. He has to accept that KU fans believed him, took him at his word and invested emotionally in the “promises” he made. And it’s always easier in a relationship for the person doing the leaving to get over it than the person who was left behind. Again, it may not be fair but I really don’t understand how Roy and all his surrogates can be so blind to this.

Speaking of his surrogates, one of Roy’s closest friends is, apparently, Randy Towner. Towner is the golf pro at Alvamar Country Club in Lawrence. He is quoted today as saying that there is no bigger KU fan than him but he will be rooting for North Carolina this weekend. He says, essentially, that Roy is his “brother” and that’s different. Well, Randy, I have news for you, there are lots of people who are bigger KU fans than you. I am not telling you that you should root for KU over Roy and his Tar Holes; that’s between you, your conscience and Roy. I would always cheer for my brother over my alma mater. But if you want KU to lose a game, you aren’t as big a fan as me. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I never want KU to lose a single game to anyone ever. Fortunately, my brother is also a KU fan and isn’t in danger of putting me in a position where I have to choose. But if you want KU to lose this game, no matter how noble your reasons, you aren’t the biggest fan. I wonder, when you and Roy play golf, do you throw games for him? I mean, I assume you try to beat him when you play him, right? So why is it OK for you to root against KU tomorrow but still think of yourself as a big fan when you don’t even want Roy to win a meaningless round of gold when you play him? I know, it’s a stupid question but I want you to think about it before you tell me what a huge fan of KU you think you are but cannot cheer for them to win in the Final Four.

And as for you, Coach Williams, shut up with that heart, body and soul talk. Every time you start in with that crap you make it sound like you got the short end of the stick in some uneven trade. What did you ever want but not get from KU? You had a loyal fan base who would have given you anything you wanted for as long as you were here. You got unmitigated love from KU and you had undying devotion. Never mind the money. I am so sick of you going on and on about how much you gave us but never seeming to think about how much you got in return.