Chuck Neinas to help with KUFBHC search
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KC Star: KU hires Chuck Neinas to help KUFBHC search
Not mentioned in this article is that Chuck and his company helped KU find our wonderful former AD 'ol Lew back in the day. And with Uncle Fester came the crapping all over our FB program, ticket gate, points for seats (which blows for us poor folks), free workout equipment for Lew, and all the other backroom deals for his cronies… I still can’t fathom how he was not thrown out by his big ears after all that and was given a 2.6 million buyout!!! Pure con man. Lew was a fundraiser that didn’t hire one single winning coach for KU. Looking at you Bonnie… When Lew was our AD he generated a lot of money, too bad it all didn’t make it to the university.
Hopefully Chuck and Co. can find KU a coach that can win and he’s not a con artist like their previous AD hire.
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The critical thing for hiring a new coach is vetting them thoroughly to determine if they will remain at KU once they get the program rebuilt.
The worst thing KU could do right now is hire another Charlie Weis, somebody with a big name that cannot rebuild the program. The second worst thing KU could do is hire a guy that is willing to stay 4 or 5 years until a better job comes along, and then jump. KU needs to find someone that is willing to build and stay - their Mike Gundy, basically.
That’s the only way KU will get good and potentially stay good and relevant in coming years.
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In all fairness, Lew also more than doubled the budget of the Athletic Department and all the basketball and football facility upgrades including the new basketball and football practice complexes as well as AFH were done during his tenure. More importantly, without Lew, KU does not go to the Orange Bowl.
Yes, there were issues during his tenure but there were also big positives that many forgot all too quickly.
For those of you that do not remember the Orange Bowl controversy, here is a snippet that explains it. Even when the Big 12 itself favored Oklahoma going to the Orange Bowl instead of Kansas, Lew though his connections was able to keep KU in the Orange Bowl; I don’t think anyone else could have done that…
Controversy
Although Virginia Tech’s selection via automatic bid was relatively quiet, Kansas’ selection caused a great deal of controversy. Kansas had lost to Big 12 runner-up Missouri and had a lower Bowl Championship Poll ranking than the Tigers. Some believed that Missouri should have been selected ahead of Kansas because they had defeated Kansas and because they had played in the Big 12 Championship Game. According to BCS officials, however, Missouri’s two losses were more of a detriment than Kansas’s one loss and subsequent championship game absence.
Pundits and fans who opposed Kansas’ selection pointed to the Jayhawks’ strength of schedule, which at one point during the season was as low as 109th out of 119 Division I teams. By the time of the BCS selection, however, Kansas’s strength of schedule had climbed by a small amount, reaching 88th in the Sagarin rankings and 74th in the CBS rankings. The final rankings rated Kansas’ schedule as more difficult than Hawaii, which was also selected to play in the BCS Aggravating the situation was the fact that Kansas and Missouri had one of the most intense rivalries in college football. Known as the Border War, the roots of the rivalry dated to the years before the American Civil War.
Two weeks after the selection of Kansas, yet another controversy arose when it was revealed that Big 12 and ACC officials had worked out an agreement to feature an Oklahoma/Virginia Tech matchup in the Orange Bowl in the hours leading up to the final selection. Oklahoma, which initiated the proposal, requested that it face the highest-ranked BCS opponent then available, which would have been Virginia Tech (ranked 3rd in the BCS). Normally, Oklahoma, the 2007 Big 12 Champion, would have played in the Fiesta Bowl, which holds the automatic rights to the Big 12 Champion’s BCS bid. A little-known clause in the Bowl Championship Series contract, however, allows for the commissioners of the BCS to override that bid if the automatically selected team had played in the game the previous year, or to create a more interesting matchup. Oklahoma had played in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and seemed a perfect candidate for execution of the clause. Representatives from the Orange and Fiesta bowls reportedly worked out a deal to swap Oklahoma and Kansas and Dan Beebe, the commissioner from the Big 12, presented the plan to the BCS committee. The remaining BCS commissioners rejected the request (with only the Big 12, ACC and Big East commissioners in favor) and honored the original selection of Kansas for the Orange Bowl and forced Oklahoma to accept its automatic Fiesta Bowl Bid.[27] The release of this plan upset many fans at both schools and across the country, who perceived that an (4)Oklahoma-(3)Virginia Tech matchup would have been superior to a (8)Kansas-(3)Virginia Tech game. Ironically, while Oklahoma-Virginia Tech was perceived as a better match-up due to their high rankings, both teams went on to be upset by the lower ranked team with Oklahoma losing 48-28 to (9)West Virginia.
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@JayHawkFanToo Thanks for that snippet. I always thought we didn’t really deserve to play in that Orange Bowl by virtue of losing to the school we don’t like to mention. Interesting how much politicking goes into the process of picking teams for the bowls.
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@JayHawkFanToo I had no idea all that went on about ku vs oklahoma in the Orange bowl. Sure us a good thing we proved we belonged.
As for Lewis-he did accomplish a few great things along with the bad.
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I’ll agree he did a lot of great capital investing for KU Athletics INC and his backroom dealing got us into the Orange Bowl but I still can’t forgive him for his handling MM and gutting our football program. Especially in the “Age of Realignment” were a turd of a FB program relegates you to a Mid-Major conference.
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@Kip_McSmithers Yeah, we were hanging on by the hair of our chinny chin chin during realignment. I was afraid a few of us wouldn’t have a chair when the music stopped. Fortunately we’ve got about 12 years to not only build but establish some cred before the TV contracts are up.
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Can we pay the search firm based on the performance of their product?
Please?
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@bskeet did we get a refund from the last one that didn’t work out? Maybe the firm should be paying the money we pay the coaches to leave.
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It would be absolutely great if we could, unfortunately it does not work this way. Search and recruiting firms simply find suitable candidates, vet them and submit their names to the search committee which in time makes the final decision. I am not sure if they could even get a policy through Lloyd’s of London (who will find an insurer for just about anything, for a price …of course), since the termination criteria would be be nearly impossible to establish and the cost would be pretty much that of a buyout.
I would guess that Zenger is the he head of the search committee so hiring Weis was on him, although in my opinion, it seemed like a good hire at the time and I wish he would have been given more time; however, when you add the TV blackout fiasco, his judgement is seriously in question.
In short, KU has two options, go with established coach for a lot of money and make sure he has all the resource s to make the program successful, or go for an up-and-coming coach for a lot less money, and give him the resources needed and most of all a reasonable time to make progress;. these two year stints are not working, make the position less attractive and are not conductive to get a program going…of course they work great for the coaches since they get paid for the entire contract anyway; on the. other hand, I seriously doubt that at this time we can get a coach that would take a non-guaranteed contract.
Best option, IMHO, is to keep Bowen for a couple of year (he makes a pittance compared to what we would be paying a new coach; the contract can be back loaded (NOT Jaybate “backloaded” ) where he gets substantial bonuses based on performance at the end of the term.
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@JayHawkFanToo I was being sarcastic! I like Bowen too.
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I know;. I was simply expanding on the concept. I apologize if it looked like I was correcting you.
