@JayHawkFanToo
KU in a strange way seems a crucial tile in the Big Shoe mosaic–kind of a wild card to mix metaphors.
In retrospect Dean, Roy and Sonny appear possibly pivotal in the beginning to building what kind of appears again in retrospect perhaps the first structure for collective biasing of player distribution apparently involving Big Shoe. Before them it appears coaches and alumni of an individual school worked unilaterally to attract players to single schools. Hypothetically speaking, Dean and Sonny seem to have been possibly the first to engage in bias-ing of talent to TWO schools by apparently working with Roy at KU and dividing up not so much the country, as the recruits geographically. What in retrospect seems a kind of Dean/Sonny/Roy alliance apparently cooperated to some kind of degree for some apparent period to channel eastern talent to Dean and western talent to Roy, if one were to give credence to Roy’s reputed indication that he agreed with Dean to recruit west of the Mississippi. This apparent cooperation, if in fact it were real, in effect appeared to indirectly help limit talent available to other programs. And KU appeared for a time not just Nike KU, but perhaps a proto-Nike-Jordan West. I have some vague recollection of Roy at KU talking about having recruited MJ to UNC and of MJ even visiting KU. At the time, it seemed like nothing more than a former player lending a former coach some of his star power to help him recruit. But it appears somehow different in retrospect if one hypothesizes a possibly broader dynamic involving Dean, Roy, Sonny and MJ.
Somewhere along the way Nike’s Jordan line emerged and Sonny and Nike parted ways.
And Roy had some recruiting controversy arise reputedly related to Jaron Rush and Myron Piggie.
Later Roy left to answer Dean’s call to return to a faltering UNC and Self and KU carried on as Nike KU for a time.
Then KU and Self reputedly signed with Adidas.
Thus, some interesting figures in the legacy of Big Shoe involvement in college basketball appear to converge and diverge during Roy’s tenure in the KU BASKETBALL legacy.
Of course, the above is at most hypothetical speculation based on appearances. From the outside looking in, it seems impossible to say what really happened.
