Ever since the Orange Bowl victory of 2008, the Kansas Football team has not only faced a steady decline on the field, but in a seemingly structured and scripted fashion, I would argue that the program has been thoroughly destroyed. Not in the "eliminate" or "shutdown" way that some people suggested after the loss to Nicholls State at the beginning of this season, but based on the events of the last 10 years, the football program has completely lost it’s identity.
Some of these events were bad decisions on the part of the university, some were completely out of the university’s control. Regardless, the recent hiring of Jeff Long and Les Miles has given some Kansas football fans signs of hope that the program will find a new identity in the process of rebuilding, which will offer some comfort to fans as a sign of progress even if the wins on the field take a while to generate.
While it may seem hyperbolic to make the comparison, the only other school that has gone through anything similar to this was SMU when it was given the "death penalty" in 1987. While the Kansas team never had an entire season literally cancelled, the winless season in 2015 had roughly the same effect. The silver lining of this comparison is that SMU, 20 years later, has had a resurgence. I am hopeful that Kansas will have a similar trajectory.
What has irked me throughout this dark decade, is the repetitive, but lazy, creed "Kansas Football has always been bad."
WE know this is not true.
While the 70’s and 80’s were not kind to the program, KU was good, even great, for a large portion of the 20th century. The accomplishments of A.R. Kennedy, John Hadl, John Riggins, Gale Sayers, and Glen Mason are glossed over so quickly. Whenever I see a major sports news outlet go straight to the "always bad" mantra and skip over just how much bad luck KU has had in the past 10 years, I feel compelled to set them straight. For anyone else who has had this same issue, here is the timeline I use to show just how much KU fans have had to endure recently:
September 2009 - Mangino loses control of the team. Several FB players start two fights with BB players. The incidents and the media coverage shakes the team. After starting the season with three decisive victories, they win against a mediocre Southern Miss and bad Iowa State team by small margins.
October 2009 - A seven game losing streak (and the 46 game road losing streak) start. The team would miss a bowl game for the first time in 4 seasons.
November 2009 - Allegations of player abuse against Mangino are investigated.
December 2009 - Mark Mangino is fired as head coach. Turner Gill is hired as the new head coach two weeks later.
March 2010 - An investigation into a ticket scalping scam in the AD’s office begins.
May 2010 - The ticket scam investigation results are made public and 5 staffers inside the athletic department are implicated in a multi-million dollar fraud.
June 2010 - Nebraska announces that it is leaving the Big 12 Conference for the Big 10 Conference. This ended the Kansas-Nebraska uninterrupted football rivalry that, at the time, was the third longest rivalry in College Football history, behind Kansas-Missouri and Minnesota-Wisconsin.
September 2010 - Turner Gill loses his first game as head coach to FCS North Dakota State, at home, 6-3.
September 2010 - Athletic Director Lew Perkins resigns from mounting pressure of the ticket fraud scandal that was discovered months prior.
November 2010 - The football team ends with a 3-9 record, the worst since 2002 - Mark Mangino’s first year.
December 2010 - The five staffers implicated in the ticket fraud scheme are convicted.
January 2011 - Sheahon Zenger is hired as the new Athletic Director.
November 2011 - Turner Gill is fired after going 2-10 in his second season, matching Mangino’s worst year, 2002.
November 2011 - Missouri announces that it is leaving the Big 12 conference for the Southeast Conference. This ends the "Border War" - at the time the second longest College football rivalry in the history of the sport, only behind Minnesota-Wisconsin.
December 2011 - Charlie Weis is hired as the head football coach, despite the recent issues at Notre Dame that led to his firing.
January 2012 - Weis dismisses 10 scholarship players, as well as many walk-on players for "academic" reasons. This instantly puts the team at a disadvantage going into spring training and recruiting.
October 2012 - With a loss to Kansas State, the KU football program now has an all time losing record.
November 2012 - The team finishes with a 1-11 record. The worst since 1987 - Bob Valesente’s final season.
July 2013 - At the Big 12 Media Days, Charlie Weis tells reporters that on the recruiting trail he calls his own team a "pile of crap" to somehow entice recruits that they will be considered for playing time immediately if they come to Kansas. Amazingly, it doesn’t work.
November 2013 - The team finishes with a 3-9 record, which some claim as progress. However, with the continued recruiting problems, Weis has to rely more on JUCO players as a stopgap.
September 2014 - Weis is fired after a shutout home loss to a weak Texas team. Clint Bowen is named the interim Head Coach.
November 2014 - The team finishes with another 3-9 record. There is a push amongst KU fans to make Bowen the permanent head coach.
December 2014 - David Beaty, a WR coach from Texas A&M with no head coaching experience is hired as the new head coach.
September 2015 - Kansas becomes the 9th FBS school to lose 600 football games all time.
November 2015 - Kansas finishes the season winless for only the second time in school history. The only other winless season was 1954.
September 2016 - Kansas beats FCS Rhode Island for the first win since Clint Bowen’s team beat Iowa State in 2014.
November 2016 - Despite being completely uncompetitive in every other game, Kansas gets a fluke win at home against Texas. Charlie Strong is fired at Texas. David Beaty is given a raise and a contract extension.
September 2017 - Kansas beats FCS SE Missouri State, but not in a convincing fashion. Some people are optimistic, but the faults in the team are obvious.
October 2017 - On national television, the Kansas offense only accrues 21 yards of offense against TCU, completing two straight games where Kansas was shut out while surrendering 40+ points.
November 2017 - With a 1-11 record, where all 11 loses were by double digits, David Beaty is given a vote of confidence from the AD.
With the firing of Sheahon Zenger in May, Long getting hired in July, Beaty being let go earlier this month, and Les Miles being hired last week, These items won’t be added to the laundry list of KU fan suffering. The biggest things that always get glossed over, but I feel are actually the most damaging to the identity of the program as a whole, were the loss of both century old rivalries with Nebraska and Missouri.
Despite down years, and bad coaches, rivalry games energize and ignite a fan base. Kansas had 200+ years of history wiped away by Nebraska and Missouri. Without those rivalry games to pump up the fans, and the history to show off to recruits, I feel that the loss of those two games on the schedule have made this particular decline feel more damaging and more disparaging. Coupled with the ever growing threat of another round of conference realignment with the Big 12 Grant of Rights expire in 2025, which could leave Kansas out of the Power 5 conferences if football is the determining factor in the realignment and the Kansas team has not improved by then.
Despite all of that, I am thankful to be a KU fan. The football team has taught me patience. I know the program can win. I’ve seen it with my own eyes while I was a student during the Glen Mason years, and following the team during the Mangino years. I am trying to be optimistic for the future and for the coming Les Miles era. While I have not been a Beaty fan, it would be great for the team to end his tenure, and the season, with a win against Texas.
I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving.
Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
**Edited for two corrections - Turner Gill’s first loss was to North Dakota State, not South Dakota State. David Beaty was a WR coach at Texas A&M, not Texas Tech.