on the failure of bill self

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Bill Simmons is my favorite columnist/blogger. He may write sports, but he is consistently hilarious and loves to reference pop culture. His column on ESPN's Page 2 is worth checking, even if you're not a sports fan. In yesterday's column, he refers to Ben Howland as the coach "who pulled Bill Self's pants down on Saturday." He also opens up the end of his blogs to emails from his smart and/or witty readers. Brandon from L.A. had this to say:

"Hey Bill, you more than anyone do a great job of calling out coaches that are killing their teams. So along those lines, how has Bill Self gone under the radar all year with you and ESPN? This should be the running subplot of this tourney. He almost single-handedly blew their chances on Thursday. Everyone knew what type of team Southern Illinois is and yet he has no counter to them and his teams are always ill-prepared. How do you not spread things out and isolate your quicker guards who also have a size advantage? And read his postgame quotes -- he says that Southern Illinois is a team you can't run plays against. What??? As you would agree (and I've been preaching all year), Kansas is by far the most talented team in this tourney. Hands down. Yet Bill Self is terrible at game planning and preparation. Look at his past tourney flameouts at Illinois and Kansas with ridiculous talent. If Howland were coaching them, they'd be destroying everyone. UCLA has half the talent as Kansas and yet will probably win Saturday because of game plan and execution. This topic has to start being covered and you are the man to do that."

Bill Simmons response: (Important note: We received this e-mail on Friday. Thought that was funny. By the way, I will always be outraged that Kansas didn't make the Final Four with THAT much talent. It's absurd. Remind me never to pick Bill Self to win a title ever again.)

I'm not the only one! Is it now officially time to start http://www.firebillself.com? Or should we do to him what the Chiefs did when they brought in Dick Vermeil and announce that we've hired a new coach before we fired the last one? I desperately want to love Kansas basketball again, and I don't think that will happen in the Bill Self era. I will give credit where it's due: he is a damn fine recruiter. Unfortunately, talent alone will not win championships.

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