Since clipping the nets last April 7 in San Antonio, national champion basketball coach Bill Self has attended:

¢ the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles.

¢ the Winged Foot Coach of the Year Awards in New York.

¢ a White House Rose Garden Ceremony in Washington, D.C.

He’s also shown up for cancer cure benefits in Sarasota, Fla., Dallas and Kansas City, Mo.; visited Boys Town in Boys Town, Neb., and spoken at the B’nai B’rith Sports Banquet in Omaha and at coaching clinics in Florida and New Jersey.

Locally, he hosted one golf tournament to benefit the Boy Scouts, another for Parks and Rec. He participated in a golf tourney in K.C. to support the College Basketball Experience, helped open a Dry Cleaners in Leawood and led a lecture series in downtown Concordia.

In addition to that, the 45-year-old bundle of energy spent much of July and September in Nevada, New Hampshire, Texas, New York, Florida, North Carolina, California, New Jersey – you name it and he was there or close to there – recruiting high school and AAU basketball players.

One man. In all those places. In a six-month period of time.

Are you kidding?

“It’s been more tiresome than other offseasons, but hey, that’s a good problem to have,” said Self, who today unofficially kicks off his sixth season as Kansas University coach by hosting KU Men’s Basketball Media Day in Allen Fieldhouse.

“It’s been a ‘good’ busy. There are a lot of worthwhile things going on. I hope we’re actually busier next year than this year only because that means we’ve had a great year.”

Self – he also managed to take a vacation with the family and write a book last summer – didn’t sound convincing in a pre-Media Day interview with the Journal-World when revealing his plans to “cut back” a bit next offseason.

“I’m going to try to make sure May and June are free. Other than that, we’ve got to do whatever we can to promote the program,” Self said.

KU fans can rest assured their coach, who signed a new 10-year contract this past offseason – a contract that at $3 million per annum is more lucrative than pacts of many NBA coaches – will not become complacent after becoming a member of the most elite 12-man coaching fraternity in the country.

Self, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, Billy Donovan, Steve Fisher, Tom Izzo, Mike Krzyzewski, Lute Olson, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, Gary Williams and Roy Williams are the only active coaches to have won NCAA titles.

“It’s pretty cool to be in that club,” Self said. “I think our fans appreciate the efforts the players and coaches and support staff have put in to put us in a position to be defending national champions. That is officially over,” he added of thinking about the past.

He laughed out loud when asked if he would be tempted to use his status as a national title coach to fend off inevitable criticism in the future – dare say when his Jayhawks lose a home game to a mid-major like Oral Roberts or fall out of the NCAA Tournament earlier than expected.

“No. No. If I had that attitude, then our whole staff and team would lose our edge,” Self said. “We have to keep our edge. I would say the reason I won’t ever complain is people are human. That (criticism) is part of the deal.”

His favorite part being a coach – the regular season – begins Friday. Late Night in the Phog will start at 6:30 p.m. in Allen.

“All this has been great. What I’m really looking forward to is coaching this team. I think we’ll have a fun year,” Self said. He conceded KU would have been a top five team in preseason polls had Darrell Arthur and Mario Chalmers returned for another season, instead of a squad expected to be a fringe top 25 team in the early going.

“It will be fresh, new, exciting, certainly challenging. I’m looking forward to the process.”

That’s the process of molding a young team – he has four returning scholarship players, four walk-ons and seven newcomers – into a winner.

“I don’t think so,” Self said, asked if he’d ever lost as many starters in his 15-year head coaching career. “Our leading returning scorer no question could have started for anybody in the country, so it’s not like we lost all five starters because Sherron (Collins) is a starter.

“They are trying really really hard, as hard as any group I’ve had,” added Self, who since mid-September has been granted two hours of practice time per week with the team in accordance with NCAA offseason rules. He also had 10 practices in August before three exhibition games in Canada.

“We have some guys I think are pretty good. Until we start practicing I don’t know how good they will be.”

The process officially starts Friday.

“I’m getting more and more excited about it every day,” Self said of the season after the title. “All coaches should be excited this time of year because we are all undefeated right now. It shouldn’t be a spoiled group. The newcomers have something to try to live up to. I think from that standpoint it will be easy to motivate them. We should be hungry.”