This is easy to forget now because Bill Self is working on a $53 contract at a powerhouse basketball program that will almost certainly build him a statue someday: He started at the bottom.
His first job was at Oral Roberts, where he won six games his first year. That was the kind of job where you didn’t recruit so much as you begged. You cold-called alums and potential donors. Licked the stamps on the envelopes you addressed to send the letters you had to write or type yourself. Those letters rarely received a response.
That experience shaped him forever — personally, in some ways, and professionally in many ways.