During the last 60 years, most of Kansas University’s football teams have been substandard. And the fault lies with the coaches and the men who hired them.Mark Mangino is starting his sixth season as football coach at Kansas University. Without a doubt, ku’s program is better than Mangino found it; he raised the level from horrible to mediocre. But where will the Jayhawks go from here?Kansas has a new offensive coordinator for the 2007 season. Ed Warinner was offensive line coach at ku in 2003-04 before moving to Illinois. Warinner returned, bringing some new ideas to ku’s offense. He recently said, “We’re trying to spread the field and be able to put pressure on the defense in a lot of different ways.” The 2007 season is going to be crucial for Mangino and his program. First of all, the Jayhawks must win their first four games (Central Michigan, SE Louisiana, Toledo, and Florida International) if they are going to have a successful season. Central Michigan is the only dangerous opponent on the nonconference schedule.Assuming Kansas wins their first four games, they would need three conference wins to cinch an invite to a nondescript bowl game. All of this will likely happen and Jayhawk fans will be content while waiting for another basketball season.Since 1946, ku has had 12 football coaches. Their overall records and winning percentages are a lamentable legacy:George Sauer (1946-47) was the best, with a 15-3-3 record and a .786 winning percentage. Next was J.V. Sikes (1948-53). Sikes had a 35-25-0 record and .583. Chuck Mather (1954-57) was a disaster: 11-26-3 and .313. Jack Mitchell (1958-66) was 44-42 and .511. Pepper Rodgers followed Mitchell (1967-70) and was 20-22 with .476. Don Fambrough had two coaching stints (1971-74 and 1979-82) and his record was 36-49-5 with a .428 percentage. Bud Moore (1975-78) was 17-27-1 and .389. Mike Gottfried (1983-85) went 15-18-1, which is .456. He’s a better coach behind a microphone. Bob Valesente (1986-87) was pitiful with a 4-17-1 record and a .205 percentage. Glen Mason (1988-96) was up and down, but mostly down with 47-54-1 and .466. AD Bob Frederick made one of the biggest mistakes in ku history by hiring Terry Allen (1997-2001), who was 20-33-1 during his tenure. That’s .379. And Mark Mangino (2002-present) has a 25-35 record that equates to .415. Mangino is 13-29 in Big 12 play and that’s an unacceptable .309. Jack Mitchell was a great recruiter who was ineffective on game day. Mitchell had an all-NFL backfield in 1960—QB John Hadl, RB Curtis McClinton, RB Bert Coan, and FB Doyle Schick. Mitchell kept his offense conservative until late in the games, then he would open it up and they would go wild. Unfortunately, it was often too late.Pepper Rodgers could coach, but he was a weak recruiter. Rodgers coached Mitchell’s players and had a great season in 1968.Over the years, ku’s administration has done a terrible job of hiring football coaches. Frederick’s selection of Allen instead of Dennis Franchione, who wanted the job, was the worst mistake in recent years.Bill Snyder proved at Kansas State that it’s possible to have great football teams in the state. ku has some recruiting advantages over K-State, but they have had way too many poor coaches to take advantage of their closeness to Kansas City.Lew Perkins hasn’t done much to improve the athletic department at Kansas. He inherited Bill Self and has been smart enough to leave basketball alone. Perkins has managed to make a legion of loyal ku supporters angry with his season-ticket policies. And now he’s moved the ku-MU football game to Kansas City, which shouldn’t have been done.About all Perkins has done is raise the salary of the AD and all of his associates.There’s no excuse for the poor football that has plagued ku down through the years. And now Mangino’s recruiting has leveled off to a point where his program is going to be mired in muddy mediocrity.ku’s chancellors throughout the history of inept football must share a big part of the blame. They chose the athletic directors who ran the football programs.Current ku chancellor Robert Hemenway’s record with ADs is nothing to be proud of. His choice of Al Bohl proved disastrous. And Perkins is going to retire before too long; thanks to Hemenway, he’ll be financially secure, but ku football and the other athletic teams haven’t progressed under his leadership.Kansas football is a slumbering giant and sooner or later the right coach will awaken him. Right now it looks like later.
Mangino is 11-29, not 13-29.
