Jim Harbaugh is safe...through the end of this season, at least.
For a school with three men’s basketball National Championships, 15 Final Fours, and the second-most victories by any school in Division I-A history (2,248), Beaty is a combined 3-34 in a game over three seasons at the helm of the Jayhawks. Kansas has one conference win under Beaty, when they upset Texas in 2016, and the team went an astonishing (under Beaty’s watch) 2-10.
Charlie Weis flamed out miserably trying to resurrect his college coaching career in Lawrence. Turner Gill thought he could bring Kansas to prominence after being the shiny new toy everyone was hyping up after his success with Buffalo in the MAC.
Both won no more than three games in any season. However, that’s a season of wins equal to Beaty’s career to this point.
The last time Kansas went to a bowl game was 2008, and it was a back-to-back bowl season under Mark Mangino. The Jayhawks slid back to earth in 2008, after being in the conversation for the BCS in 2007, where they finished 12-1.
The latest gaffe was a 26-23 overtime loss on Saturday to I-AA Nicholls State. This was the second time Beaty’s Jayhawks lost to a I-AA school. His first ever game as head coach was a 41-38 loss to South Dakota State in 2015. Now, SDSU was ranked 16th in the opening poll of the I-AA season, and did make an appearance in the playoffs that year.
It is not really all that surprising that Kansas could not get the job done over the weekend. The Colonels went 8-5, and advanced to the I-AA playoffs last season.
This week, Kansas travels to Mount Pleasant, Michigan to face Central Michigan. The Chippewas rattled off a 45-27 win in last year’s matchup. In fact, if you look at the remaining opponents on the Kansas schedule, they have lost the last matchup against each one of them. Kansas State only beat the Jayhawks by 10 last season, the smallest margin of 2017 defeat for any opponent on the 2018 docket.
Trying to find anything positive to say about this program is a stretch. We all know Kansas is a basketball school first and foremost. It makes you wonder how much money the athletic program is treading having a cash-cow like I-A football being this bad.
The Big 12 media poll had Kansas ranked dead last, as expected. The Jayhawks garnered only 52 votes, with Baylor the next closest at 125. Let this sink in for a moment...Oklahoma had almost as many first-place votes (46) as Kansas had total votes.
You would expect this level of conversation for the last-place teams in a non-Power Five conference like the WAC or the Sun Belt. We are not however discussing a school in a mid-major conference. We are talking about a team in a conference that has sent its champion (Oklahoma) to the BCS playoffs twice of the four years it has existed. Granted the Sooners were not able to win their semifinal both times, but Baker Mayfield was not playing both ways each time.
I remember growing up when it was Baylor or Iowa State who routinely sat in the basement of the Big 12 year after year. Eventually, both programs have turned things around to respectability since. Kansas actually seems to be getting worse, if it is entirely possible to do so. You could not even label them as the Cleveland Browns of the NCAA, as there is nothing to gain in terms of draft picks or salary benefits by losing almost every single week.
David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium holds 50,071. Only 24,035 turned out to see the Jayhawks lose to Nicholls State on Saturday. If Bill Self decided he wanted to erect a court for the men’s basketball squad to practice at halftime of any game this season, it would be the only sell out that occurs, and much more entertaining.
-JC24