Kansas football: Top-3 candidates to replace Beaty
By Nick Athan
Athletic Director Jeff Long will likely begin the search process for a new Kansas football head coach soon and there are only three candidates who should apply.
Last weekend at Central Michigan, the Kansas Jayhawks broke one of the nation’s longest streaks of futility by winning their first road game since 2009.
After their embarrassing season opening loss, at home versus Nicholls State, head coach David Beaty elevated his candidacy to be the first NCAA collegiate football coach to be canned in 2018. Yet, he managed to take his shell-shocked team on foreign soil and came out smelling like a real head coach with a 31-7 road victory.
From this point forward, predicting another Kansas win may rest on this weekend’s home game versus Rutgers. However, when the Big 12 season begins a week later at Baylor, the coaching search will be front and center.
When the University of Kansas hired Jeff Long to become their new AD, Chancellor Douglas A. Girod had a singular goal on the forefront: fix the football program. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.
Long’s mission is simple. With Bill Self atop the men’s basketball program, boasting a Final Four or bust mentality, the football program needs a coach to match Self’s abilities to build a consistent winner.
In the Big 12 conference, football rules the path toward profits and donations. Yes, the basketball team has drained some coin from the institution’s wealthiest benefactors, but those millionaires are prepared to rebuild football in the image of its basketball program.
So, when the flirtation ends at some point this season, and the Beaty experiment is a thankfully a distant memory, three candidates should comprise Long’s entire wish list.
- Les Miles – Clearly, he’s the top choice to rebuild the Kansas program. The former LSU coach was given the boot for basically winning every year, producing NFL talent on both sides of the ball, and lastly, delivering bowl appearances.
Yet not everyone is sold on Miles. At 64, he’s older than a young up and coming head coach, however as a veteran who can recruit in the fertile SEC country, he would also be able to hand select his successor. Someone who would take over the program when he retires from coaching. In doing so, he could become the Bill Snyder of Lawrence.
Bottom line, Miles wants to coach again and would prefer a job in the SEC to show his former bosses that they made a big mistake in firing him. If that’s the case, Miles might not accept the job in Lawrence despite his long-standing relationship with Long.
The down-side to hiring Long is going to be the money that he’ll demand to be the football savior. He’s going to need assurances that the necessary resources will be available to put together a top-shelf staff. If Long is the answer, and Kansas wants to shorten its respectability clock, Miles can still salvage a decent recruiting class for 2019 if he is hired soon.
- Brett Bielema – Hired by Jeff Long at Arkansas, the former football head coach was ousted after a poor 2017 performance. To that end, the University gave him a lofty $11.8M buyout. That could be problematic for Long should Bielema sit on those funds if the Kansas job isn’t his preferred head coaching job. Still, many believe he’ll be the guy Long eventually hires.
On a positive note, you bet the two former colleagues want another chance to prove that they can do it at Kansas after failing to deliver the goods at Arkansas. So, add that fact with the bond the two men share, it certainly gives Bielema the edge in some eyes over Miles.
However, the question for Long will be simple. If he believes Bielema is the man to succeed Beaty, can he fix one of the worst football programs at the Division 1 level? In my mind, Bielema, with a plethora of resources at Arkansas, simply didn’t get the job done. This leads me to believe that he may also struggle to succeed at Kansas.
- Major Applewhite – Set aside for the moment that his buyout at Houston for he and has staff is in the millions. He remains my top choice to land in Lawrence. He’s also the longest shot of the three Long should consider. On a positive note, he’s the type of coach Kansas needs to “weather the storm” in rebuilding the football squad from the depths of mediocrity. Yet for those who say hiring Applewhite is wishful thinking, Kansas faced similar odds landing Long.
Granted, Applewhite, who was the Cougars offensive coordinator before taking over the head coaching job in 2017, isn’t making “break the bank” money at Houston. His five-year, $7.5M deal is a number Kansas could easily exceed with some lofty checks from it’s boosters to buyout the final three years of his contract.
For my money, hiring Applewhite would give the program, a dynamic head coach with Big 12 coaching experience, and chops to build a top-level staff. He may very well give the Jayhawks their best chance to become a bowl participant by 2020.