Kansas Coaches Can’t Stay Away Mason’s Reversal Stirs Rumors About His Personal Situation

Kansas must be a wonderful place. Its coaches seem to keep accepting bigger-paying jobs elsewhere and then, to everybody’s embarrassment, abruptly decide to stay.

Larry Brown did it to UCLA. Now Glen Mason has done it to Georgia.

The difference is, people expected such shenanigans from Brown, the job-hopping basketball coach who led the Jayhawks to the 1988 NCAA championship and then privately accepted and publicly rejected UCLA’s offer in one confusing day.

For Mason, though, it is wildly out of character. From 1987, when Kansas hired him to rebuild its down-and-out football program, until about two weeks ago, Mason was a picture of stability.

Always stressing loyalty and perseverance, he built the Jayhawks into a solid enough teamto tie Colorado and Kansas State for second in the Big Eight and whip UCLA in the Aloha Bowl.

That was supposed to be his last game as Kansas coach, because on Dec. 18, three days after saying, “‘We’ve been busy recruiting our heads off because I am coming back next year to Kansas,” he took a late flight to Georgia and announced he was accepting the job.

The decision was so sudden, he hadn’t had time to tell his players.

But one week later, just before his team went out and beat the Bruins on Christmas Day, he delivered to his players an even bigger stunner: He was not leaving at all. Mason had approached school officials and received permission to return.

So what happened? Rumors began circulating almost at once, most centering on his personal situation.

Mason was declining interview requests Tuesday as the Jayhawks boarded a plane in Honolulu for the return trip to Kansas. “I’m not doing interviews,” Mason said. “I’ve had so many requests that my head is spinning.”

Welcomed back with open arms by his once-spurned Kansas bosses, Mason has made only veiled comments about doing what’s best for his family when asked to explain his sudden reversal. He has always chosen to keep his personal life as private as possible, although a bitter divorce from wife Sally earlier this year did become public.

“I’m not normally a guy who waffles on my decisions, but in the week since I’ve taken the job, I became convinced that it was in the best interests of my family and me personally (to stay),” said Mason.

Mason’s teenage son and daughter stayed with him this fall while his ex-wife maintained her own residence. He had said he would not take the Georgia job if his children didn’t agree to it.