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Oakland basketball coach Greg Kampe making mark in fight against cancer

Greg Kampe has been a head college basketball coach for 31 years, all of them at Oakland University.

He’s made some NCAA tournaments and he’s won some league titles, but he’s well aware that being in charge of a mid-major program in suburban Detroit doesn’t make him famous.

So when the brutal touch of cancer reached into his program over the last year, causing two players to lose parents, he wanted to do something to raise money for the American Cancer Society. He just wasn’t sure how. He wasn’t the type of guy who could just snap his fingers and raise six figures.

Oakland coach Greg Kampe's program has been affected by cancer during the last year. (AP)
Oakland coach Greg Kampe's program has been affected by cancer during the last year. (AP)

“The best thing I have going for me is the people I know,” Kampe said. “So I reached out to the people I know and came up with a unique, once-in-a-lifetime event.”

Among the people he knows are nine of the best college basketball coaches in America:

John Calipari (Kentucky), Tom Izzo (Michigan State), John Beilein (Michigan), Roy Williams (North Carolina), Sean Miller (Arizona), Bob Huggins (West Virginia), Steve Alford (UCLA), Josh Pastner (Memphis) and Rick Barnes (Tennessee).

The unique, once-in-a-lifetime event is this:

You bid on a specific coach during an open online auction that began Monday and ends May 1. The winner and two friends come to Detroit and spend the night of May 31 at the MotorCity Casino.

That evening there will be a dinner, an exclusive, private party featuring Kampe and his peers – 10 coaches total – and the people who won the bid for each of them. It’s a relatively small affair (the entire party will have 40 people at it). It provides plenty of opportunity to not just hang around your coach, but the other guys as well.

The next day everyone heads to Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., to play the famed South Course, which has hosted U.S. Opens, PGA Championships and a Ryder Cup. Your foursome is you, your two friends, and the big-time coach you bid on. Food, local transportation, greens fees and three rooms for one night at the casino are included.

“It’s not a golf outing,” Kampe said. “It’s 24 hours with your coach. We are going to play golf, but that isn’t all of it, that’s just some of it.”

The highly personalized experience is expected to draw some money; the max bid is $60,000 per coach. Kampe has done most of the legwork in an effort to keep costs down.

The goal is to bring in more than $500,000 in one swoop.

It’s a dream come true for the college basketball fan.

“You’re getting to spend a lot of time with nine of the best coaches in the country … and me,” Kampe joked.

The concept is unique. Rather than some massive golf outing where access is limited and everything feels overcrowded, this is a small, one-of-a-kind experience.

It’s all done at a casino, so it should be lively. And the golf can’t get much better.

There is no other way to get on Oakland Hills, called the 17th-best course in America in the latest Golf Digest rankings, unless you know a member. And even then, you won’t have Izzo or Roy or Cal playing with you, or in the foursome behind.

The American Cancer Society is watching to see if the concept works and whether it can be duplicated for other celebrities.

“This is the best I could come up with,” Kampe said. “We don’t know how it will go. We do know there is nothing else like it. It’s going to be a lot of fun for whoever wins the bids.”

That much is undeniable.

Let the bidding begin.

To make a bid, visit: beatcancer.auction-bid.org