I know what happened. 2 horrible coaching decisions. Turner Gill was the "young hot coach" that year, and was fired after 2 years I think. Then Weis, the big name coach that didn't quite get it done at the big name school was brought in and failed miserably when he found out recruiting for Kansas is not quite like recruiting for FUND and coaching ability does mean something.
Good lesson that coaching changes should NOT be taken lightly , and that coaches who are hired to invigorate a floundering program will fail most of the time.
It actually started way before that. Lou Perkins, a native Kansan was the AD responsible for building UConns football program came in and immediately locked horns with Mangino. As soon as he found an opening he sabotaged the program.
The 2009 season was much like yours this year. KU was coming off of an Orange Bowl victory and a Court Bowl victory, won the first five games and was rated 12th in the nation.
At halftime of the Colorado game Mangino went ballistic on one of the pussies he'd recruited after the success of the Orange Bowl. Kid went to the AD and they got several players to tell them what a mean coach he was and then academia went crazy. They've never supported football. KU lost their last 7 games that season. Mangino was fired.
Perkins had Jim Harbaugh lined up to take the job. His wife is a KU grad and he wanted to be near her family. He also loves the KU campus, as its quite beautiful and Lawrence which is a great college town. He was ready to sign, but Perkins insisted on telling him he could not coach Stanford in the Rose Bowl. Harbaugh stuck to his guns and backed out.
Now KU is at strike two and has a reputation of running off good, hard nised coaches. KU needs a coach like that. So the dipshit hired Gill. Gill was a nice guy. Too nice. He didn't believe in strength and conditioning and discipline. He actually recruited quite well. But players were flunking out and drug abuse was rampant.
Weis was a last ditch hire. Perkins walked away once the Big donors forced him out because he'd made the football program an unmitigated disaster. Weis kicked 23 players off of the team. One of which was the starting QB, whom he wanted to replace with Dayne Crist, a 5th year transfer from ND. Crist was a High School AA. He also brought in Jake Heaps who was the #1 QB recruit on 2010. They both failed miserably because Weis was trying to run a Pro style offense at a school that's undermanned. Not a good combo. In addition he had the worst QB coach in the history of football (Ron Powlus) and the worst WR coach in Ron Ianello. KU's offense was horrible. In fact I've never seen a worse offense at this level in 40 years.
But the killer with Weis was that he brought in a huge amount of transfers, both JUCO and Bluebshirts. Not only did those guys not pan out, they left....in droves. So in Spring practice this year KU could barely even field an offensive line. Due to more discipline problems and injuries over the summer, KU now has 58 scholarship players.
Fortunately Beaty is a stud. He loves Lawrence and KU. He brought in a phenomenal recruiting class considering the circumstances and then in August 11 transfers that are all walkons. His philosophy is #earnit and that's what everyone include transfers from VA Tech and Miami.
The KU football program has been decimated talentwise, because of two buffons and an athletic director who started the whole process.
