May basketball lifer Jeff Bzdelik get what he wants, if it is in Boulder or someplace else, or still at Air Force, a comfort zone more than a hardship.

Challenge is somewhere beyond the order and edge of Colorado Springs. Certainly, that is true in basketball. It is braver for Bzdelik to go than to stay.

Bzdelik is decent and earnest and can coach players who will listen. He was never properly thanked for taking the arrows for Carmelo Anthony on that young man's way west.

Say this about that. The Nuggets have done no better since than they did once for Bzdelik, so until they do, George Karl is slopping from the same trough.

Bzdelik's success at Air Force is modest by any other standard than that of Air Force, a program limited in more ways than most college basketball programs.

Air Force can never be more than the occasional head turner, as it was when, not long ago, the world looked and saw a 17-1 record.

What happened after that is what will happen most often - reality will reduce surprise to want, and that celebrated tournament bubble will keep a reserved seat for the Falcons.

The Colorado job would seem to be Bzdelik's for the accepting, the formality coming only after Air Force loses in the NIT, or wins it.

Since Nuggets assistant Mike Dunlap has opted out of CU's search, whatever competition Bzdelik had for the job is now reduced to his own conscience.

Would he be abandoning Air Force, breaking a promise to young men who came there for him? Ah, only slightly. First of all, his contract will be settled and the settlement ($275,000) is more an embarrassment than an obstacle.

This is, in fact, a tribute to both schools, that one would have a coach another wants and that the other would pay even a modest bribe to get him.

This is how it is done where college basketball matters, where the annual in-feeding gets a bit messy to watch.

CU athletic director Mike Bohn has been given permission to speak with Bzdelik, and Bzdelik has allowed as how he will listen. How civil and sensible it all is for college basketball.

Think, for example, of North Carolina prying Roy Williams out of Kansas or Kansas luring Bill Self from Illinois, or Illinois . . . well, let's just say the food chain in college basketball is well formed, and while Air Force is somewhere below Colorado, neither one is sitting at the adult table.

As for reneging on recruits, Bzdelik barely has any, and no basketball player goes to Air Force just to play basketball, or if he does, he won't last past the first reveille.

Bzdelik's chief flaw is that he has no recruiting record to speak of (not that Colorado does, either). When he went to Air Force, the class he would be leaving was there to be used, and each side got something from the other.

The teams did better than they probably would have otherwise, and Bzdelik got a reputation as a competent coach instead of as a convenient seat warmer.

Bzdelik was never meant to be anything more than a substitute coach for the Nuggets, and yet he managed to coax and guide them to the playoffs when each player knew well what Bzdelik could allow himself to admit, that he really was not wanted.

He did it without their loyalty, which now leaves Karl to find another excuse.

Simply put, CU is a better job than is Air Force, for a coach wanting to reach higher because the possibilities are greater.

Bzdelik should take the job if offered, and CU should offer before someone else does.

It is to Bzdelik's great credit that he is wanted, since this is the time zone of empty whistles.

Basketball coaching vacancies exist from up and down to over and back - CU, Denver, Colorado State, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico.

What this seems to imply is that only fools and failures even try to win at basketball out here.

But if it can be done consistently in the middle of nowhere, like Kansas or in a horse pasture like Kentucky or at a scholar-intensive place like Duke, it can be done here, it can be done anywhere.

The right coach and the right commitment are what it takes. If CU gets Bzdelik, it might have one of the two.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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