Kansas football: No season makes evaluation of Miles difficult

Kansas football is only in year two of the Les Miles era, but with the likelihood of college athletics in 2020 trending down, it’ll be tough to evaluate Miles as a coach.

Back when Kansas football hired Les Miles in November of 2018, there was understandably a lot of fanfare. He’s a national championship coach, and he had a lot of success in the SEC. Despite this, the Jayhawks struggled to a 3-9 record in Miles’ first season, which is understandable. He took over a struggling program to say the least.

Now that he’s got a year at Kansas under his belt though, the expectations are bound to increase. Not by much, but fans were expecting a four or five win season instead of the usual three wins; however, it’s looking like we may not get to see how the Jayhawks have progressed under Miles.

In case you haven’t been on social media or seen the news lately, it seems that the 2020 season may not end up happening at all. Multiple sources have indicated that the Big Ten will cancel its season, and it’s difficult to see the other conferences not following suit.

If worst comes to worst and Kansas football’s season does down the drain, it’ll make it difficult to evaluate Miles and his progress on the field. Sure, he and his staff have been doing a great job recruiting thus far, but it’s the on-field product that fans really care about.

Plus, the 2020 season would be a good time to see if some kinks from 2019 were worked out.

There were some head-scratching play calls last season where it seemed like a blend between offensive coordinator Brent Dearmon and Miles. Speaking of Dearmon, this will be his first full season as the team’s offensive coordinator, so it would have been nice to see the effect of that.

This is such a transitional period for Kansas football that losing the season will make it tough to see progress or lack thereof, therefore making it tough to evaluate Miles and the direction of Kansas football.

Losing the college football season would be bad for the players, fans, and anyone who’s heavily involved in the game like coaches and officials. There’s no easy solution to combating the risk of COVID-19, but hopefully administrators can come up with a way to safely play in 2020.