20
SPORTS / WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
MEN'S BASKETBALL
Managers follow team faithfully
BY CARLO RAMIREZ
cramirez@kansan.com
Each year, a batch of KU students spend their summer auditioning to become a men's basketball manager.
Bill Self Basketball Camp is the largest collegiate basketball camp in the country and hosts kids of all ages on campus for two weeks. It is during these camps that aspiring managers are assessed by coaches, staff and current managers to determine whether they have what it takes to become a Kansas basketball manager.
"You aren't just auditioning for a job," said head basketball manager Sean Mulhern, a senior from San Francisco. "You are being handed the keys to everything and entering a close-knit family that is KU basketball."
About 40 students auditioned this summer, but the staff is narrowed down to three spots. This leaves many students returning to school
with no job. Still, it is very common for students to audition two or even three times before being hired as student managers. Mulhern was denied two summers in a row before being asked to become a student manager.
Sean Gutting, a former student from Fort Collins, Colo., said his main reason for attending the University was to become a men's basketball manager. After he was denied in both 2007 and 2008, he transferred to Colorado State, where he is now the men's basketball team manager.
Gutting said he pursued managing in order to become a coach. He the experience of traveling and practicing with the team was invaluable and that many top Division I coaches had connections across the country.
"I saw managing at Division I university as an internship," Gutting said. "My hope is to do my job well enough and hopefully impress the
coaches enough to be placed somewhere after I graduate"
Brendan Riley, who was a manager from 2006 to 2009, was placed as a graduate assistant for the Illinois State men's basketball team — a job that is usually reserved for former players. In exchange for serving on staff for the men's team, his graduate school is also paid for. It is an opportunity like this one that keep current managers determined to work hard.
Managing is a full-time job and requires the staff to be just as perfect, if not more so, than the players. They serve as the puppet masters who help practice and game days run smoothly.
During Bill Self Camps aspiring managers are asked to perform tasks that other jobs may view as non- traditional, such as picking up players, staff and other guests at the airport at all hours of the night. Any Kansas manager will say it just comes with the territory.
"When the men's team gets back into Lawrence at 3:30 a.m., we have to be there," Mulhern said. "It is a round-the-clock job."
ability to deal with situations on the fly, their work ethic, how they handle constructive criticism and how well they follow directions.
Each manager is asked to attend individual training practices as well as team scrimmages. They are in charge of tallying and yelling out the score each time the players run down the floor. During individual workouts, managers are in charge of passing, and rebounding for the players. Managers must be just as mentally tough as the players. If players mess up in practice and get yelled at, the same is true for managers who make a mistake.
" You can't be scared to look like a nerd or anything," Mulhern said. "You gotta know it's not about you, we are asking them to do these task for a reason, not to make them look dumb."
Managing for one of the most historic college basketball programs in the nation asks all involved- players, coaches and managers to put in 110 percent.
COLUMN (CONTINUED FROM 19)
It's no mistake the SEC is making bundles of cash in football, though. Thanks to some brilliant maneuvering by commissioner Mike Slive, the league negotiated a television deal worth almost 3.5 times more than the Big 12's eight-year, $480 million deal that had been signed just two years earlier.
It was that, the Big Ten Network, which has seen remarkable success as the only league-specific television network after initial skepticism, and the imminent restructuring of the Pac-10's television deal that led to the panic of conference realignment. There were greener pastures in every conference from the SEC to even the ACC, which negotiated a multibillion dollar television deal of its own in 2009.
Those football television deals, coupled with money from the BCS — which trickles down exclusively to conferences, unlike the money from the NCAA Tournament in basketball — meant that football was king in realignment.
"The thing that bugs me the most about it was how this has just been strictly based on money. Not education or scholarships or anything like that," said Kevin Meyer, a senior from Lenexa. "These are college athletes and they are also students. And that's just a small part of the student population."
But those television deals also wound up being the Jayhawks' savior. Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe, with the conference's cable deal coming up for restructuring next year (though the network package is still locked down through 2016), assured Texas and the other schools considering defection that they'd receive equal money in the new deal.
Kansas and the other four schools that were under threat of being left behind, took matters into their own hands. Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Iowa State and Missouri pledged to Beebe that, should Texas, Oklahoma or Texas A&M not reach the money guaranteed them by other conferences, the left-behind five would pool together and make up the difference between promised and actual revenue.
But if the realignment beast rears its head once more, the same issues could wreck the Jayhawks. Basketball may be king at Kansas, but football is king in realignment. And the Jayhawks could just get left behind.
---