KU at Big 12 Media Day
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Video:
Still surreal seeing Les f’ing Miles as KU HC.
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I have to admit i’m stoked for football season, but weren’t we all pretty hyped when Charlie Weis was hired?
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I wasn’t, but can’t speak for others.
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@FarmerJayhawk Seriously? After the Turner Gill debacle you weren’t happy about the Weis hire?
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@nuleafjhawk What does Charlie Weis have to do with Les Miles?
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@FarmerJayhawk The dude exudes class. He runs a first class operation. I couldn’t be happier with getting Miles.
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@KUSTEVE Well, my point is, I’m hoping that we aren’t getting our hopes too high and expecting too much from Les Miles. Apparently, I’m the only one that had high expectations for Weis.
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@nuleafjhawk Les is vastly superior to Charlie in every conceivable way. Especially running college football programs.
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@KUSTEVE I hope so. Can’t be much worse.
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nuleafjhawk said:
@FarmerJayhawk Seriously? After the Turner Gill debacle you weren’t happy about the Weis hire?
Affirmative. After all the names that surfaced during that search, we ended up with front butt. Zenger went to find the best, and he found Charlie Weis. I really wanted Dave Doeren or Mike Leach then.
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FarmerJayhawk said:
nuleafjhawk said:
@FarmerJayhawk Seriously? After the Turner Gill debacle you weren’t happy about the Weis hire?
Affirmative. After all the names that surfaced during that search, we ended up with front butt. Zenger went to find the best, and he found Charlie Weis. I really wanted Dave Doeren or Mike Leach then.
Ditto, but Leach wasn’t really an option given the circumstances.
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@nuleafjhawk I think you will see such a difference that it will surprise you. I remember when charlie came aboard, and we were all excited about it. This has a much different feel to it. There are almost too many things to list, from the way Les approaches recruiting, the motivation, the discipline, the obsession with all the little things, from the guys on the sidelines holding their hands above their waist, to the film room break downs after scrimmages. It’s just in another zone, another class. This guy competed for years at the hardest job in America, and won a national title. He built a good Okie St football team out of the ashes, and was in the limelight of college football for years at LSU. It’s what he does best. Charlie’s best moments were with the Patriots, and college football was not his first love. I know he had some success at ND, but Charlie has never done even close to what Les has accomplished in college football. I think Les is the real deal. I am absolutely all in.
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@nuleafjhawk I wasn’t very excited when Weis was hired. He was a big name for sure but did nothing at Notre Dame. A school that puts tons more into football than we ever have. Ksuck fans have been comparing the 2 hires and I think its crap. Miles gave OSU 2 wins vs OU (they only have 14 in program history vs OU) in 5 years. He gave them their first bowl win in over a decade. At LSU he won a national title, yes I realize that was with mostly Sabans guys but its gotta count for something. He also averaged 9 wins a year over 10 years in the toughest division in CFB. Weis had 2 good years with someone else’s players.
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nuleafjhawk said:
@KUSTEVE Well, my point is, I’m hoping that we aren’t getting our hopes too high and expecting too much from Les Miles. Apparently, I’m the only one that had high expectations for Weis.
was never a Charlie Weis fan - -way I figure he was just here for some extra money
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Charlie Weis was only good as an OC in the NFL. His approach to recruiting is what truly crippled the program. Nothing before Weis did the long term damage that Weis did trying to use KU as a spring board to a better job.
Mangino got complacent after the Orange Bowl and didn’t recruit as hard because he expected to get a better job, but obviously that didn’t happen. I never had an issue with Mangino getting fired because that 2009 team quit on Mangino after the investigation was announced. Mangino lost the locker room so he had to go. What I was never a fan of was Perkins publicly announcing the investigation midseason because it was bad publicity and meant he could hire a task master style coach that cycle. I would’ve much rather seen Perkins fire Mangino after the season and paid the buyout.
Perkins then further screwed up the situation by not being patient enough to wait for Stanford to finish their season and allowing Jim Harbaugh to finish his season there. Perkins further screwed up that search by not modifying the contract he gave to Turner Gill. He straight up gave Gill the contract meant for Harbaugh and put unrealistic expectations on Gill with that contract. That was a win now contract for Gill when he should’ve had a contract half that size with incentives because KU was in rebuild mode at that point. It was also a bad contract because Perkins never viewed Gill specifically as anything more than a transitional coach after “missing out” on Harbaugh. Obviously we know that situation bombed spectacularly and Perkins ended up fired for the ticket scandal and not Gill because Perkins wasn’t going to fire Gill after 2 years.
Zenger comes aboard and decided Gill isn’t a fit and fired him with $6 left on the contract. There were two names that most people wanted at the time. Mike Leach was the best case scenario and Larry Fedora seemed the most realistic option at the time.
Zenger goes out on his search and brought back Weis for $2.5 million per season. I don’t remember any knowledgeable person praising the hire. Even Weis himself pretty much said he was looking for a quick fix. That was a strong sign that he it viewed KU as a spring board job. His recruiting obviously reflected that mentality and he crippled the program for multiple recruiting cycles. He booted a bunch of Gill players killing the number of upper classmen his first year. He replaced them with JuCo players further crippling the depth of the program at the freshmen level.
After Weis was fired, KU was still paying Gill as well so Zenger crippled his budget for the next hire. As much as we all wanted a big name coach, such as Brent Venables, it was never going to happen because of budgetary issues. We all know Zenger settled on Beaty who was a name brought up from the beginning because of his ties to Texas recruiting, KU, and his price tag.
Beaty inherited an absolute mess of a roster. KU did not have much P5 talent, ridiculous amount of class imbalance from Weis, but he had a contract that could afford him time to rebuild. Even after his extension, it was still a very KU friendly contract that allowed him more rebuild time despite most people’s thoughts. Rumors that began swirling after his third year (Jeff Long’s hiring is why) killed recruiting for the 2019 cycle and was a setback that Miles will have to deal with. Prior to that, there was real progress being made both on the field and with class balance. KU was a handful of plays away from going to a bowl game last season, that’s progress.
As much as people crap on Beaty for the W-L, he did genuinely have KU moving in the right direction just not at the speed people wanted, including Jeff Long.
I don’t think David Beaty will ever get the full credit he deserves for the job he did here because he inherited arguably the worst roster situation in a major conference program in the modern era. If Les Miles gets KU to bowl game within the first 2-3 years, hopefully Beaty will get some of the credit for the foundation he left Miles.
