For the second-consecutive year, I picked the national champion in my bracket. Memphis' free-throw meltdown allowed Kansas to cap a miraculous comeback, send the game to OT and then dominate the extra session en route to a 75-68 win.

This feat, my feat, picking the champ: That's nothing. To me, it was pretty easy the past two years, Florida last and the Jayhawks this. Besides, the rest of my bracket stunk.

The BIG, BIG question in Oklahoma is will Bill Self take his title and come home to Oklahoma State?

You the fair sports fan thinks this is a crazy notion, but I say it's not that crazy. John Wooden to OSU is crazy. The Pokes would have to get on the three-year-it's-really-urgent plan given that Wooden is almost 100.

Self to Stillwater is a possibility.

You probably know the story about Self meeting his wife, Cindy, after a win over the Jayhawks when Bill was a player back in the 1980s. She's a Poke. He's a Poke. He coached for Oklahoma State under both Leonard Hamilton and Eddie Sutton in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Oklahoma is home. Self was born in Okmulgee and played prep ball in Edmond. And, anytime a guy has a chance to go home and make a ton of money for doing so, there exists the possibility that he would take that opportunity seriously.

Word is that OSU benefactor T. Boone Pickens is willing to pay Self in the neighborhood of $3.5 million a year. That's football money.

If I'm an OSU fan, supporter, student, whatever, my concern is not that they would be paying Self this kind of money. Bill Self is one of the three best coaches in college basketball right now, the others being Memphis' John Calipari and North Carolina's Roy Williams.

If I had to make this a Top 5, I'd throw UCLA's Ben Howland and Michigan State's Tom Izzo in there.

However, only Self is a fit for Oklahoma State. He is the perfect pick for the Pokes.

My concern would be that the expectation set by a Self hiring would be unachievable. Think about it. Sure, Self is a great coach. Sure, OSU has a tremendous history, terrific basketball ambience and is an upper-level (Top 25) job.

However, he would be expected to win a title at Oklahoma State. Anything less, given Self's coronation tonight, would be a failure. And to win six straight games in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, to me, is about as hard as any team achievement in sports.

The teams are all so good. You can get upset on any given night.

It took Kansas 20 years to win a title after its championship in 1988, and this isn't a middle-tier hoops university. This is Kansas, one of the five best basketball programs in history, the others being UCLA, North Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky.

Oklahoma State hasn't won a title since the 1940s.

And while the Pokes made it to the Final Four twice under Eddie Sutton, Eddie wasn't getting paid to win a title. It wasn't a title-or-bust situation for him.

Pay Bill Self $3.5 million a year, and you create a mammoth, mammoth, coronary-producing blob of pressure on him, on the players, on Mike Holder, on everybody. It becomes the financial equivalent of paying Alex Rodriguez $25 million a season to play for the Texas Rangers.

On the other hand, if Self really, really wants to come home to Stillwater, he should do so at a conventional salary, for a guy who just won a title, that is. Take what he's getting now, plus a reasonable bump.

It would show he's coming to Oklahoma for all the right reasons, and it would take what would be a monster monkey off the back of the program.

And what we'll find out over the next few days is just how much Bill Self really wants to come home to Oklahoma because while I don't think he's some kind of coaching mercenary, I do think the allure of coming home will be much stronger than people think.

Interesting days ahead, folks.