By By Tony Krausz / assistant sports editor
April 18, 2003
They arrive, they coach and they move on.
It's a fact of life in college athletics, and no program is safe from a coach departing before fans, players, alumni and athletic departments want to see a coach leave.
Coaches are not completely bound to an institution, as the men and women who they mold into a unit on the field or court are to a school when they sign to join a team.
Kansas has become the poster institution for this fact, with the departure of Roy Williams for North Carolina.
As to be expected, the Jayhawk faithful are voicing strong opinions against the program's figure head for the past 15 years.
The same folks who pulled for Williams to finally get a NCAA crown down in New Orleans are now his strongest detractors because they feel jilted by his departure.
The Jayhawks' backers are being so vocal that it is starting to boarder on pathetic whining.
Williams stepped in at Lawrence, Kan., after the university was jilted by another coach.
He came to the school after the departure of Larry Brown, who had just led the Jayhawks to the national title in 1988.
Williams captured nine conference championships, brought the team to 14 straight NCAA tournaments and guided Kansas to four Final Fours, including two appearances in the championship game.
For 15 years, the chant of "Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk" and the name of Roy Williams were synonymous with each other, and it seemed to be a perfect marriage.
But reality finally set in for Kansas, and like the tornado that ripped Dorothy away from her farm, Williams was swept away by the force of returning to the program he played for and was an assistant for under the legendary Dean Smith.
The truth is coaches leave.
Fair or unfair, it's just the way it is, and at the end of the day, every one just has to deal with it.
The larger issue is what about the young men and women who sign with a program only to see the coach pack up and move on.
Everyone but college athletes are free agents, and this is true not just in the world of sports.
If a teenager goes to a university and find he or she doesn't like it after a year, a semester, a month or even just a few weeks, he or she is free to leave for another institutional with no penalty, unless he or she plays a sport.
Student-athletes are forced to sit out a year after transferring to protect tampering in recruiting, or so the company line says.
But if coaches can skedaddle whenever they want, why can't the athletes follow the coach out the door?
The NCAA supports its stance on athletes being tied to the school they sign with out of high school or junior college with the bold print on the top of every national letter of intent.
The statement says an athlete is signing with an institution not a coach.
The print at the top of these letters is paid attention to as much as the plastic warning on a hair dryer that says do not use product while still in the shower.
Kids sign to play with coaches that is as much as a fact as coaches will leave sooner or later in one way or another.
If a coach leaves, players should be able to rip up their commitment to a program and refigure their college plans.
Student-athletes should be able to do this not just because they do sign to play for a coach, but because they signed with an institution because of a coach.
When a coach leaves the institution and program changes, and kids should not be bound to a place that is not the same as when they signed.
College athletes being able to switch schools does need to limited to the extreme situation of a coach's departure, otherwise the barrage of recruiting scandals will sky rocket.
But the young men and women should be allowed to walk with a coach, and this should be fact in college athletics.
Otherwise how can people still get so upset when underclassmen and high schoolers just forgo college for the pros.