For 15 years, Bill Self has been the most inescapable figure in college basketball.
The Big 12 can’t beat him. The NCAA and even the FBI couldn’t take him down. Maybe he left a few national championships behind, but he got two — and Kansas is usually one of the teams to get beat when March Madness begins every year.
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It was an unprecedented run. Is it over?
When asked if he would coach in the 2026-27 season after Kansas was eliminated by St. John’s in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Sunday, Self said “I haven’t decided yet,” citing health issues that have plagued him since 2023, when he was forced to miss the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments after needing a stent to treat a clogged artery.
“I’ll come back to reunite with my family and visit and see what’s going on,” he said. “I love what I do. I need to be able to do it in a place where I feel good and healthy to do it reasonably well, so I’ll go home and it’ll all be discussed.”
Sunday marked the fourth straight year Kansas lost in the first or second round. Self has a 33-22 record in the league over the past three seasons and has dominated the league for more than a decade.
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Around the Big 12, coaches and administrators have speculated all season that this could be Self’s final year given the declining performance and health concerns during the NIL era. Self had to miss a game in Colorado in January after being treated for dehydration and atrial fibrillation, a condition that causes an irregular heartbeat.
Self, 63, has led Kansas to four Final Four appearances, though one of those times, in 2018, was wiped from the record books after playing against ineligible player Silvio de Sousa. Previously, a former Adidas executive admitted in court that he paid De Souza’s family $20,000 to attend the University of Kansas.
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Self escaped the case, which was part of an FBI investigation into college basketball, and received minimal punishment despite the program being charged with five NCAA Division 1 violations stemming from its ties to Adidas.
“This is definitely a year that doesn’t look good,” Self said. “I might be looking at [my career] Now, it’s in two-year increments, so I tried to focus on the season and get us into the second weekend, but we failed. So I’m going to go back and break it down and see where that leads. “