KANSAS CITY, Mo. — While straining to identify questioners among a media crowd packed into one end of the T-Mobile Center floor Wednesday, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson was asked about his first time in the conference while at Oklahoma in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Sampson responded by going back further than that. He was just 32 years old when he took over Washington State’s program in 1987, briefly recalling life in the old Pac-10.
Back then, you didn’t need an arena to house media days, as the Big 12 did Wednesday. You didn’t need trophy hardware displayed at midcourt, strobe-lit photo shoots for players, mural collages of passionate fans, or school mascots dancing around for TikTok videos.
You just needed to talk about your team for a few hours inside a hotel ballroom and then get back on a flight home.
“I remember going to media day in 1988 at the LAX Marriott. It didn't look like this,” Sampson said. “Look how media days have changed. I remember they would put us at a table and of course, nobody ever came to our table. They always went to Lute’s table or Jim Harrick’s table.”
Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson addresses assembled media Wednesday at the Big 12 Men’s Basketball Media Day event in Kansas City, Missouri.
That would be Lute Olson of Arizona and Jim Harrick of UCLA. Coaches who were at the top of their game back then, while Sampson was just starting to grow his.
At age 69, Sampson has seen the college game grow along with him, sometimes in ways that are difficult to imagine. For one thing, players in the 1980s and 1990s not only had to sit out a year after transferring — and often faced even more punishment if doing so within a conference — but they now can transfer pretty much every year.
They can also get paid more so by transferring; NIL consulting firm Opendorse estimated that players receive an average of 1.7 times more NIL compensation for an upcoming season if they transfer instead of remaining at a current school.
So it's all been a whirlwind in college basketball, but Sampson wasn’t really complaining Wednesday.
Just remembering.
“The game has changed. Of course, the league has changed,” Sampson said. “The league should be better. Everything about college basketball is better today.
“You know, for the traditionalist, it will never be the same. We didn't have NIL back then. There was no transfer portal. I can imagine some of those old coaches are rolling in their grave — if they knew the kids can not only can transfer with no penalty, and can transfer inside the league, they would go crazy.”
The metrics suggest the Big 12 has adjusted pretty well. The conference not only has five teams among the Top 10 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll but also has all 16 teams within the top 90 of Kenpom’s preseason ratings.
“What’s the biggest separator to me?” Cincinnati coach Wes Miller said. “It's not comparing the top to the top somewhere else, which we’re probably winning one. But if you compare the middle of the league to the middle of other leagues, the bottom of the league to bottom of other leagues, it ain't even close. And with that night in, night out battle in our league, the level of basketball is just so high.”
In turn the level of play keeps feeding fan interest, which in turn feeds media interest. Thus, preseason media days at T-Mobile Center, one on Tuesday for women's teams and another on Wednesday for the men.
Kansas head coach Bill Self addresses holds court with assembled media Wednesday at the Big 12 Men’s Basketball Media Day event in Kansas City.
Maybe it helps interest in the Big 12 that the T-Mobile Center, which will also host the conference's men's and women's tournaments, is an NBA-sized arena that has no NBA team.
And maybe it helps that the Big 12 was able to scoop up Arizona and three other Pac-12 schools after Oregon and Washington fled to the Big Ten, reducing what was the West's power conference to crumbles.
However you look at it, the Big 12 isn't looking up at anyone in the men's game today.
"There has never been a better time than right now to be part of the Big 12 for all the right reasons," Commissioner Brett Yormark said. "We've completely re-imagined this conference over the last 25 months, and we've become a truly national brand across 10 states and four time zones."
Sampson said it’s all about adapting, and his career has been about doing exactly that. After leaving Oklahoma to take over Indiana in 2006-07, Sampson resigned after two seasons there in the wake of an investigation into allegedly improper recruiting contacts. He was handed a show-cause penalty to kept him out of the game for at least five years, then resurfaced at Houston in 2014-15.
Since then, he’s won 77.0% of his games and, when the Cougars were promoted from the AAC to the much rougher Big 12 last season, went out and won the league anyway.
Big 12 coaches pose for a photo as part of the conference’s Men’s Basketball Media Day event Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri. Pictured (from left): Bill Self (Kansas), Bobby Hurley (ASU), Tommy Lloyd (Arizona), Kelvin Sampson (Houston), Jamie Dixon (TCU), Grant McCasland (Texas Tech), Scott Drew (Baylor), Wes Miller (Cincinnati), Darien DeVries (West Virginia), T.J. Otzelberger (Iowa State), Tad Boyle (Colorado), Craig Smith (Utah), Steve Lutz (Oklahoma State), Kevin Young (BYU), Jerome Tang (Kansas State), Johnny Dawkins (UCF).
It’s “what's the new rule? OK, let's go. Let's adapt and move on,” Sampson said.
“That's kind of where you have to look at it now. But it's been fun to watch coming back into the Big 12, going to the different arenas and seeing the improvements and how great the fan bases are.
“But I remember going to old Bramlage (at Kansas State), that place was loud back then too. People say what’s the difference now with (Kansas') Allen Fieldhouse? Nothing. It hasn't changed. We couldn't beat ‘em in the 90s, 2000s and we can't beat 'em today. They still have a crazy fan base. Everybody’s got great fan bases. There’s just some that are better than others.”
Unlike the old Pac-10 and Pac-12, the Big 12 had then and still has mostly teams that play outside of major cities, where pro teams can draw interest away. Schools such as Oklahoma State, Baylor, West Virginia, K-State, Iowa State, Texas Tech and, now ... Arizona.
So when a reporter told UA coach Tommy Lloyd that another Big 12 coach had mentioned how Hilton Coliseum fans willed Iowa State to a key win there last season, Lloyd responded by saying he expected every opposing crowd will try to make it tough on Arizona this season.
But he noted that he also has some ammo of his own.
Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd addresses assembled media Wednesday at the Big 12 Men’s Basketball Media Day event.
“We have one of those arenas, too,” Lloyd told the reporter. “We had a game against UCLA last year where we didn't play well, and we were down 20 points at one time, even into the second half (UCLA led by up to 19 points in the first half and by up to 17 in the second half of UA’s 77-71 win on Jan. 20). Our fans brought us to the finish line, and we were able to get it done.
"So I know how that feels to have that, and I know how that feels to play against it.”
