Bill Self's worldview is fairly simple. You can be soft, or you can be not soft. If you are soft you will be a loser. If you are not soft, you have a chance to someday be tough, and this shapes everything in his world.
He's told the story before about the time he was going through all the reasons the Kansas basketball job might not be for him. The conversation was with his father.
"If you're soft," Self has remembered his dad saying, "you shouldn't go."
Self took the job, obviously, and over the years has called everyone close to him soft at one time or another.