Doyel: Holtmann told me, 'There are some jobs you have to take.' Ohio State was one.

Gregg Doyel | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Chris Holtmann's Butler timeline Here is Chris Holtmann's path to Butler and his accomplishments as the Bulldogs' men's basketball coach.

INDIANAPOLIS – He didn’t want to leave. Not sure how much that matters today, given that Chris Holtmann has in fact left Butler for Ohio State, but it needs to be said and it needs to be said right away, before time passes and we get used to seeing Holtmann in all that scarlet and gray – or worse, we get used to not seeing him much at all anymore – and he becomes just another guy who worked for Butler and left and didn’t want to go and blah blah blah.

You’ve heard it before, right Butler fans? Todd Lickliter wasn’t looking to leave in 2007, but Butler was still in the Horizon League and Iowa threw all that money at him and so he left for the Big Ten.

More Butler coverage: Twitter reacts: Chris Holtmann heads from Butler to Ohio State

Potential candidates: Will Butler stay in the family again?

Chris Holtmann leaves Butler for Ohio State

Brad Stevens didn’t even consider leaving, might not have ever left if he were the normal genius college coach, but Stevens is something beyond that and so the world’s biggest basketball brand – the Boston Celtics – came after him and, well, what do you do? You leave Butler for Boston.

Yes, you’ve heard it before around here. The irony is, you didn’t hear it from two other people at the center of this whole story. You didn’t hear how hard it was to leave Butler from the man Holtmann is replacing at Ohio State, Thad Matta, who took the Butler job in 2000 and was so in love with the place that he stayed one whole year before leaving for Xavier in 2001. Matta was a climber – nothing wrong with that – and he didn’t stay at Xavier very long, either, before bolting for Ohio State in 2004.

Ironically, you also didn’t hear it in 2000 from Barry Collier, the Butler athletic director now, the guy who has made one remarkable hire after another. Back when he was coaching the Butler basketball team, Barry Collier wasn’t a climber. He was a survivor.

Collier was also a Butler grad, so when the coaching job opened in 1989 and he was an assistant at Stanford, he applied for it. Butler didn’t come to him; he went to Butler. Times were different then, for college basketball but especially for Butler, and Collier mailed then-Butler President Geoffrey Bannister an outline that went on and on, 45 pages in all, a master plan to turn Butler into a winner. It worked, he got the job, but after six years he was 87-85 and he wasn’t looking to leave; he was looking to survive.

Collier survived and then some, of course, going 109-47 over the next five years and leading Butler to three NCAA tournament appearances in his final four years and then leaving for … Nebraska? A coach who is determined to stay at Butler, especially if he’s a Butler alum, doesn’t leave for Nebraska.

Holtmann didn’t want to leave. He had so many chances, so many great chances. Four big-time schools have come after him – Georgia Tech and Tennessee in recent years, Missouri and North Carolina State in recent months – and talks got serious with all but Tennessee. Offers that would have doubled Holtmann’s salary were made, and rejected. He wanted to stay.

He had his sandwich shop near campus where they knew him, had his grilled chicken salad ready, brought it to the table where he always sat. He had his wife and little girl who loved it in Indianapolis, loved it at Butler. That mattered to him.

He had an athletic director (Collier) and a president (James Danko) who reached out to him, not vice versa, after great seasons to offer him more money, more years, more security. That mattered to Holtmann.

He had Joey Brunk.

That mattered to him.

MORE ON BRUNK: Doyel: How to turn a stringbean into a Bulldog

Joey’s dad, Joe, died in April.

Holtmann cares about that kid, cares about all his players of course, but Joey’s the one who lost his father less than two months ago. Holtmann couldn’t even imagine leaving Joey.

Listen: A lot of what you’re reading here about Holtmann, this isn’t me guessing. He and I have talked about Joey Brunk. We’ve talked for years about Holtmann's career trajectory, about his family, about his pursuers.

When Georgia Tech offered him its job after the 2015-16 season – to replace Brian Gregory, who had been in Atlanta since leaving Dayton in 2011, when he was replaced there by current IU coach Archie Miller of all people – Holtmann called me for advice. No, really. Lord knows he talked to a lot more people than the local sports writer, and surely valued their input more than mine, but he wanted a relative basketball outsider’s opinion on what he had at Butler, what he would be rejecting at Georgia Tech.

Holtmann wanted to stay in 2016, but the Yellow Jackets were offering a lot more money and all those resources and he wanted to know: Am I crazy for wanting to stay? And of course I told him: No, you’re not crazy. And also I told him: You’re going to be pursued by better jobs than that one.

“But I don’t want to leave,” he told me in late March 2016.

And he didn’t. Missouri came after him. North Carolina State came after him. It was after Holtmann said no to those two schools that we were talking about those decisions, and I remember exactly where I was: Driving on I-70, heading east from Indianapolis for a story in New Castle, when Holtmann said something that scared me to death:

“But there are some jobs you have to take,” he said, and he mentioned one by name:

Ohio State.

He wasn’t rooting in late March against Matta, who wasn’t fired until this week. He was just telling me that there were jobs, and not all that many jobs, where a coach has the resources and the support to win and to win the right way. “You don’t have to cheat,” Holtmann has said many times, knowing that’s a line he would never cross, or even get close enough to see it. The jobs you can’t turn down, he was saying, are among the best two jobs in their conference. There are six major conferences. You can do the math.

But your math would be wrong. Holtmann has said to me, repeatedly over the years and again Thursday night, that there are “no more than five jobs in college basketball” that he’d even consider leaving Butler to take. But Ohio State, I’ve known since March, was one.

When Matta was fired a few days ago, I texted Holtmann, teasingly but seriously: If you leave me for this, I would understand.

He didn’t want to leave. The search firm representing Ohio State came after Holtmann earlier this week, and he said no. So Ohio State went after Creighton’s Greg McDermott. When McDermott said no, Ohio State came back to Holtmann. They were offering six years. He said no.

Ohio State offered seven years.

No.

Ohio State offered eight years.

“That created some pause,” Holtmann was telling me Thursday night.

See, Holtmann wanted to stay at Butler. But he couldn’t turn down Ohio State. If he slept well on Thursday night, I’d be stunned.

Doubt he’ll sleep well for a while.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.