Ken Davis

Bill Self has been answering the Oklahoma State question for months. When it started early in the season, it seemed like a crazy rumor. When Cowboys coach Sean Sutton was forced to resign last week, it surfaced in the form of a Final Four distraction for Kansas. When the Jayhawks won the national championship Monday night, the question still wouldn’t go away — even though Self never wavered in his response.

Perhaps that explains Self’s opening comment when he made it official Thursday. The coach at Kansas isn’t leaving for his alma mater. He’s got a new deal with the national champions.

“I don’t know what the big deal is, to be honest,” Self said after his chancellor and his athletic director introduced him as the perfect man for the Kansas job.

We know what Self meant. He was saying he’s a man of his word. He kept telling us he wasn’t “a viable candidate,” but he said he would “answer the phone” if Oklahoma State called.

It turns out Self did more than answer the phone. After meeting with Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins for 15 minutes Wednesday, Self spent two hours with Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder at a hotel not far from the Kansas campus. And after sleeping on that information, Self met with Perkins again Thursday.

That’s when he got his raise, a salary increase that would have taken place regardless, but grew in size when the Cowboys got involved.

“Bill and I have agreed in principle that he will be our coach for years to come,” Perkins said.

The new deal with Kansas will replace the contract extension Self signed last year. That one pays him $1.375 million annually. Perkins said details of the new deal, which is still being finalized, would be released later but it’s safe to say Self will be joining the club of college basketball’s highest-paid coaches. Florida coach Billy Donovan became president of that club in 2007 after leading the Gators to their second consecutive national title and signing a six-year deal worth $3.5 million per year.

That brings us to the other meaning of Self’s opening statement. What happened Thursday in Lawrence, isn’t a “big deal” in the world of coaching. Not these days. It’s simply the cost of doing business. Win a national championship and you’d better be prepared to pay the price.

Donovan was wooed by Kentucky, but decided to stay. Before his new contract could be finalized, Donovan accepted an offer to coach the NBA Orlando Magic. Donovan slept on that decision, decided he belonged in college, changed his mind again, and got paid even more money when he returned.

This is nothing new. In fact, for Kansas fans, it carried an extraordinary level of déjà vu. When the Jayhawks won the national championship in 1988, Larry Brown left for the NBA. Roy Williams returned to North Carolina in 2005, just days after his Kansas team lost to Syracuse in the national championship game.

Remember how close Mike Krzyzewski came to leaving Duke in 2004? The Los Angeles Lakers teased him with a $40 million package over five years.

Any coach good enough to win a national championship is going to be approached by someone. For Self, it was his alma mater, a place he called home for 11 years.

There will be those who say Self was crazy not to take Oklahoma State’s money. The job at Kansas is without a doubt a better job. But the presence of billionaire T. Boone Pickens raised the stakes. Pickens donated $165 million to OSU to improve its football stadium. A column in the Tulsa World earlier this week indicated Oklahoma State was prepared to dangle $3.5 million annually in front of Self, in addition to a $6 million signing bonus.

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