Kansas coach Bill Self talks with media members on Saturday, March 21, 2026 at Viejas Arena in San Diego. Photo by Nick Krug

In an interview with Jon Rothstein released Thursday on the “Inside College Basketball Now” podcast, Kansas coach Bill Self shed new light on his decision to return for a 24th season with the Jayhawks, reiterating that he feels much better physically and explaining that he is motivated to prove himself in a new era of college basketball.

After KU lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to St. John’s in March, Self said during the postgame press conference that he wasn’t sure whether he would return as head coach. Ten days later, he announced he was coming back.

Self told Rothstein that it was a mistake for him to create ambiguity about his future rather than firmly saying “there’s no decision to be made.” But, he added, in the moment he “probably thought that was probably it” for his career.

And if he had retired, it would have been because of his health issues.

In recent years, one heart problem caused him to miss the 2023 NCAA Tournament, one hospitalized him in July 2025 and one prevented him from traveling to the Colorado game in January. In the interview with Rothstein, he disclosed that at one point he had a heart attack.

“I had been told some things and I’d had some issues during the season that (weren’t) documented that, ‘God dang, what am I doing? I mean, geez,'” Self said. “But talking to multiple doctors, an expert out of Dallas, doing different things, and, ‘We can handle this, we can change meds, we can do some different things.’ And that’s what we did. And I started feeling better immediately.”

Self said he now has a clean bill of health and is doing well — “except I can’t walk worth a crap right now because I had my knee replaced.”

Of course, even with his significantly improved health situation, Self is under no obligation to continue coaching, Rothstein pointed out, as a Hall of Famer who already holds two national titles.

“I don’t feel I need to,” Self said. “I feel I want to.”

The longtime coach said he prides himself on his ability to adjust. In some sense that has meant on-court adjustments: “We used to be a high-low team,” he said. “We used to play inside-out. We won a national championship playing that way.

“We won a national championship playing outside-in. We won a national championship utilizing the 3-point line. We won a national championship playing to easy baskets and layups, depending on personnel.”

Now he wants to prove that he can adjust to a new era of college basketball.

By his own admission, even though the 2022 national title technically occurred after players became able to profit off name, image and likeness rights, it was a product of a different sort of era. (In the years since, KU has lost in either the first or second round four straight times.)

“I really want to prove to myself that I can do it with the new generation of college basketball,” Self said. “So I love coaching, I love being around the guys, I love teaching, but I also have an inner drive to say, ‘You know what? I’m not so long in the tooth that I can’t adjust.'”

What would constitute sufficient proof? Rothstein asked Self if he would need to take KU back to a Final Four to feel he had met the challenge. Self responded that he just wants to be “in the game, that if things fell right, we could win it,” as he said has been the case in “18 or 19” of his previous seasons in Lawrence.

“I want to be in a situation where we’re playing games for the highest stakes,” Self said. “Does that mean you’re going to win it? No. I mean, God dang, it’d be great to win it, but it’s kind of hard to win one … I want to be one of those teams that year in, year out, and certainly this year when they think about teams that could cut down a net, Kansas is one of them. And I think we will be, I do.”