CHAMPAIGN, ILL. ? Much can happen while covering a story that changes by the hour. So by the time you’re opening your morning paper, the toughest decision in Bill Self’s life already may have been made.

But as I write this Wednesday evening, I’m doing so presuming the Illini basketball coach soon will be shaking hands with his new employer, Kansas University.

Fans become emotionally tied to their favorite team’s coach and feel jilted if they pack their bags and leave for greener pastures. It’s as though you’ve been left standing alone on the porch, watching your sweetheart drive away for good, not even a goodbye kiss to ease the pain.

In the case of Self, that feeling runs deep, even though his stay in Central Illinois has been just three years. He’s so popular, even the media are having trouble dealing with his departure.

“We’ll never have another one like him,” a scribe said Tuesday at the Illini basketball banquet. “He’s as good as it gets.”

Dick Vitale has told me that. So have numerous national college basketball writers who rank Self No. 1 in terms of courtesy, accessibility, openness and honesty.

So if you feel bad because Illinois may be losing its very, very good basketball coach, I feel bad because it’s losing a far better person.

To express that, I’m compelled to share two personal stories that best portray his personal side.

Almost four months to the day after he was hired at Illinois, my father died suddenly in Evanston. I barely knew Bill at that point, but at the funeral he sent a handwritten letter, which was delivered by another sportswriter. The letter was written with genuine concern, truly touching, and I’ve kept it because it was such a fine gesture.

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There was a basket of flowers from the Illini coaching staff and team. Each of his assistant coaches called my mother’s house to express sympathy.

I was moved simply because of the thoughtfulness of the expression.

But that was really nothing compared to what happened a year and a half later after we’d shared quite a bit of time together.

It was a summer evening, and I was covering a Decatur Pride softball game at Borg-Warner Field. Two days earlier, my mother had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer in both lungs. It was tough news, and Bill somehow heard about it that afternoon.

I’ll never know how he tracked down the hard-to-find phone number for Borg-Warner Field, but somehow he got it.

I was only mildly surprised to hear from him, because from time to time he’d call just to play a prank or to share something funny he’d heard. A couple of times he’d called to tell me they’d signed a recruit. But I had no idea he was calling about my mother.

Very simply, he asked what he could do to help. He said he had two players in the Chicago area — Sean Harrington and Lucas Johnson — and he could have them at her house the next morning to spend time with her and cheer her up.

“Or I could go up and see her myself,” he said. “Just tell me what to do.”

There are times in your life when the overwhelming kindness of another can bring you to tears, and I wrestled with that while telling him he had to do nothing at all. Just the fact that he’d offered, I said, would make our whole family feel better.

And to this day, almost every time we visit, Bill asks about my mom. Not in an obligatory way, but with questions and real concerns. And my mom always asks about him.

Professionally, I tried to make sure the fondness never compromised the job we each had to do. I criticized him in print last season for not benching Frank Williams. Bill explained why he thought I was wrong.

I’ve suggested lineup changes in print, and he’s dismissed most of them as bad ideas. Never once did a bit of criticism either way become personal, and that’s how it should be.

I’m grateful to have been reminded of some wonderful life lessons while being around Bill, not the least of which is an unbending obligation to be kind to people, to listen to their questions and treat each person as someone special.

Last October, I was asked to help arrange for Bill to speak at a state convention of the Illinois Police Benevolent Assn. in Decatur. And even though Bill was speaking at a Nike clinic the night before in Cleveland, he readily agreed to be in Decatur Saturday evening because his plane would be back in Champaign by Saturday noon.

We picked him up at his home in a limousine and whisked him to the Decatur Holiday Inn. After the dinner and speech, I asked him if he wanted to head back to Champaign or if he wanted “to go out and play.”

His eyes lit up. And knowing we had a designated driver piloting the limousine, he said, “Let’s play.”

So we rolled onto Merchant Street and whisked him into the newly opened Katz martini bar.

Inside, it took about 30 seconds before a woman walked by and said, “That looks a lot like Bill Self.”

Before long, patrons were swarming him, asking for autographs, to pose for photographs and to speak on their cell phones to boyfriends or husbands.

“Honey, you’ll never guess who I’m standing next to,” a woman stuttered excitedly into her phone, then handed it to Bill.

“Hi,” he said. “Who’s this? Well, this is Bill Self, the Illinois basketball coach.”

On the other end of the line, Self later told me, the man said, “Yeah, right buddy. And what are you doing with my wife?”

He was patient and friendly with every soul, once muscling through the thick crowd and returning with a tray of drinks which he passed out to a group of admirers. He shook hands, slapped high-fives and loved every minute of our two-hour stay.

I know he loved it because every now and then he’ll say, “What’s been happening at Katz lately? We’ve got to go there again.”

He’s a real person, but that includes having real dreams and looking after the real needs of his family.

Kansas always has been Self’s dream job, and he’s entitled to that. I’ve never wanted to be wrong about a column more than I’d like to be dead wrong about this one. Maybe he’ll have an 11th-hour change of heart. Maybe Kansas will botch the deal by involving too many candidates in too public a forum. That, I believe, is Illinois’ best chance.

I’m writing a book about Brian Cook and needed some of Bill’s time Tuesday to help with the project. It was a hectic day, his cell phone and office phone ringing constantly as reporters from around the country tried to flag him down. After working out on the Stairmaster, he returned to his office and flipped open his phone.

“Twenty-two messages,” he said. “Not bad.”

Then he leaned forward and quietly shared some thoughts, never completely tipping his hand, but making me feel I knew which decision he’d make.

“This will be the last time I’ll see you at an Illinois basketball banquet tonight,” I told him.

“Don’t say that,” he said.

“It is. And it’s hard to think about that.”

I stood and turned aside because I was suddenly hit with a wave of emotion.

I had a hard time looking him in the eye. But when I did, I noticed he couldn’t look at me, either.

That’s when I knew.

Dumb as it sounds, I just felt sad.