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Speaking His Mind
Published: 4/9/2008 12:21 PM
Last Modified: 4/9/2008 12:21 PM

Kansas booster and SemGroup CEO and President Tom Kivisto was asked his thoughts Monday about Bill Self's future.
Kivisto answered everyone's questions, saying nice things about KU and Self hours before the NCAA championship game, and then steered the conversation in an interesting direction.
"There is a disparity, I think, in certain ways between the way coaches are compensated and what players are left with," Kivisto said.
"Coaches can move around pretty freely. It's a free market. If players leave, they are not eligible to play for a year. You can imagine being a student, which they all are, and the demand on their study time the last three or four weeks (of postseason). They are missing two or three days of classes, and I'm not even talking about the distraction and the pressures of playing and being the hero or the goat from one day to the next. The kids really struggle to make things come together."
Kivisto, who played basketball at KU, said he thinks the NCAA has been weak in creating a type of environment that is more support of student-athletes. He also said the NCAA has been weak at protecting the game in terms of rule changes, or rule enforcement.
"I think the referees have way too much power in this game," he said. "I can't think of (another) sport where a referee can eliminate top talent from the game. They have a lot better rules in international play. They have kept up with the game better than we have and we invented the game."
Then, digressing, Kivisto said there is an inequity in "where coaches are in the game and where players are in the game."
Said Kivisto, "What's interesting is, in college, coaches are everything. Everybody knows all the coaches in the NCAA. Think about OU and it's (Bob), Stoops. In basketball, it's Coach K and Roy Williams and Bill Self. The players kind of come and go.
"In the NBA, it's just the opposite. Everybody knows the players and you kind of wonder who are the coaches? It's kind of like in the pros, the players are the game. And, in college, it's the NCAA organization and the coaches that are the game and the players get left out a little bit."
Sounds like something to think about.





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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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