I'm not a big Pitino fan, but he nails it with his comments.
From a coaching perspective it's all about poaching and being poached. Where you used to need to be out recuting high school kids, now it's a 24/7 job where you're out talking to high school AND college kids.
In the end, the fan loses when every player is a free agent. I'm a KU fan because at some level I've bought into this "illusion" that the name on the front of the shirt matters and that it's something that we all have in common. I like to believe that a kid like Mayo has the same level of "buy in" that I do when it comes to the entire KU community. That's the key word: community. I ran into a guy in a KU shirt in Wyoming last week. I said, "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" to him and we had a nice 5 minute chat. 2 weeks before that at a conference, I met another KU guy. In both cases, I may never see either person again, but we made a nice connection. I'd like to believe that if I met Mitch Lightfoot that he'd have the same kind of reaction if I met him in the wild.
But do I think some of the guys on our current roster care about the larger KU community, or are they just there to earn a paycheck? Sadly, I can point to a few guys where I clearly think it's the latter. That's sad.
