Really, it’s like climbing a flight of stairs.
Kansas University’s football program could have taken the chance and tried to lunge up four steps at a time, with the risk of rolling head over feet back down to the bottom. Or it could do what steady progress demands – step by step, low-risk, knowing that the footing always will be there.
KU now enters year five of the Mark Mangino era, and as the coach and dozens of players spoke Tuesday during KU’s media day at Memorial Stadium, there was a sense of comfort where the team is in what often is the most analyzed year of a coach’s tenure – the first with 100 percent of Mangino’s own recruits under his leadership.
“We’re on solid turf,” Mangino said. “We’re recruiting well, we’re putting the pieces together. I don’t think any particular record, no matter how good it is, will make us go ahead and say we’ve arrived. And I don’t think there is any record that would make us say we’ve gone backwards. I don’t anticipate that happening at all.”
A foundation isn’t set up strictly on wins and losses, though. Mangino claims the 2004 team that finished 4-7 was more sturdy than the ’03 team that went to the Tangerine Bowl. But the 2005 campaign – when the Jayhawks went 7-5 and won the Fort Worth Bowl – was the first reward for doing things right and not hurrying to find the pot of gold.
“There’s a lot of confidence right now,” cornerback Aqib Talib said. “We all feel good about our situation coming off the bowl win.”
But where does that leave Kansas for 2006?
Personnel is factor one – though eight defensive starters were lost, KU does have a nice blend of experience and raw talent ready to fill in the gaps.
“We lost eight guys,” Talib said, “but in ’95, (Kansas) only returned, like, two starters on defense, and they went 10-2 and went to a bowl game. I feel like we’ve got good people to replace those guys. If we put it all together, we’ll be all right this year.”
Discipline is another wild card – a mind-set that a punch in the arm doesn’t send a program flailing to the ground. Rather, it makes it clinch its teeth and want to hit back.
“The way the program is set up,” center David Ochoa said, “we really don’t settle for anything less than our best.”
That’s done through the familiarity that a five-year head coach can bring. Mangino spoke at his fifth straight media day Tuesday – like every year, on a hot, muggy day in Lawrence – and was asked once again about the pieces he’s making into a program.
He didn’t speak necessarily about tangibles like talent, schedule, facilities or fan base. He spoke about the other things you can’t put a finger on – expectations, routines and familiarity.
“We know what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it and what the standards are,” Mangino said. “We have systems in place for offense, defense and special teams. We have a recruiting system in place that has been good for us. We feel like on any given day of the calendar year, you can put it in front of a player and he knows what exactly we’re going to do that day, how we’re going to do it and what’s expected of him through those tasks. Those kind of things.”
Tangibly, the Jayhawks have made steady progress – from a 2-10 team in 2002, Mangino’s first year, to the Fort Worth Bowl champions in 2005.
Now, with four of five team captains from last year gone, a freshman quarterback in place and eight new starters on defense, how have things changed around the Jayhawk football team this year?
Or have they?
“It seems just like last year,” Talib said. “New faces, but the tempo and everything in practice is about the same as last year.”
An example, perhaps, of how a football team becomes a football program.