KU gets its coach

By Matt Tait     Dec 6, 2014

Nick Krug
Defensive coordinator Clint Bowen, left, laughs with newly-hired Kansas head football coach David Beaty before Beaty is introduced to the Allen Fieldhouse crowd during halftime of the JayhawksÕ game against Floriday on Friday, Dec. 5, 2014. Beaty is the 38th head coach in the programÕs history.

Six days after the official end of the 2014 Kansas University football season, the program took its first step at yet another rebuilding attempt, when former KU assistant David Beaty accepted an offer to become the 38th head football coach in KU history.

KU, via a press release on Friday evening, confirmed the news that first broke early Friday morning. In it, Beaty expressed his enthusiasm toward returning to Lawrence and also revealed that former interim KU coach Clint Bowen had agreed to stay on as the program’s defensive coordinator and associate head coach.

“I am very excited to be back at Kansas,” said Beaty, who already had changed his Twitter page to reflect his new position. “I am especially excited that Clint Bowen has agreed to stay on as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator. Clint will be a huge part of our success going forward and I am fortunate to have him on my staff.”

Known for his reputation as a stellar recruiter in Texas and for his work with a handful of All-American wide receivers at various stops, Beaty emerged from a group of candidates with previous ties to the program. Sources said Beaty’s strong telephone interview, which took place earlier in the week night, wowed everyone on KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger’s search committee, and, by early Friday morning, despite the expectation that a new coach would not be named until next week, a plane carrying Beaty, 44, along with his wife, Raynee, and daughters, Averie (15) and Alexa (10), was on its way to Lawrence from College Station, Texas, where Beaty spent the past three seasons as a Texas A&M assistant coach under Kevin Sumlin.

After meeting with his new team early Friday evening, Beaty was introduced to a crowd of 16,300 at Allen Fieldhouse during halftime of Friday’s KU-Florida men’s basketball game. During a brief speech in which he talked about how overjoyed and humbled he and his family were to be back in Lawrence, Beaty paid tribute to one of his favorite Jayhawk things.

“One of the greatest things in all of sports is when that game is pretty much clinched and you hear that low rock chalk Jayhawk,” Beaty said. “It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I’m looking forward to hearing it a bunch.”

Terms of Beaty’s contract were not available Friday night, but sources have said it may be around $800,000 per year in base salary with incentives that could push total annual compensation as high as $1.5 million. KU has scheduled a 9:30 a.m. news conference for Monday to formally introduce its new football coach.

Around the same time Beaty and company were in flight on Friday morning, former Rice wide receiver Jarett Dillard, who played for three NFL teams after a successful stint with Beaty, wandered up to South Texas College Law School Friday morning to begin preparing for an afternoon exam. As he settled in for another day of hitting the books, Dillard inexplicably began hearing people talking about his former coach.

The enrollment at Dillard’s current school is made up largely of Texas A&M alums and Dillard said people were buzzing about the Beaty-to-Kansas news bright and early.

“There was a lot of talk about him leaving for Kansas this morning,” Dillard told the Journal-World by telephone. “They were talking about him on a first-name basis, and I was like, ‘You all don’t know him.’ So I gave him a call first thing and told him congratulations.”

After embracing the initial shock of hearing so much buzz about his former mentor, Dillard said he was hardly surprised to learn that Beaty had landed the opportunity.

“As time has gone on, I’ve noticed that he made a lot of good moves and transitions that coaches should make,” Dillard said. “And I always figured it was just a matter of time before he would be a head coach.”

Former KU standout Dezmon Briscoe felt the same way and said via telephone that he was thrilled to hear of Beaty’s return to Lawrence.

“I think it’s real good,” Briscoe said. “Especially because the fan base and people around the program will remember him as a guy who was around Kansas football when we had some success and were going good.”

Added Dillard: “It’s great that he’s back in Kansas, a place he’s familiar with and he knows the people there and the overall character of Kansas football. It’s almost as if he’s moving back home.”

Both former Beaty pupils remembered their coach as a tough but fair guy who liked to have fun and was never afraid to embrace the grind.

“He enjoys the experience just like the players,” Dillard said. “I remember running out of the tunnel, he always saw in all of our eyes that we were excited to play and he was always just as excited as we were. I think that enthusiasm definitely carries over. You want a coach to get excited with you when you score a touchdown or make a big hit. It shows he’s just as excited about football as you are.”

A native of Garland, Texas, Beaty has worked in various coaching roles at three universities since 2006. His college coaching career began after a highly successful stint as a high school coach in Texas from 1994-2005 that included head coaching gigs at North Dallas High (2001) and Irving MacArthur High (2002-05).

Until Friday, the highest Beaty had climbed in the college ranks came in 2010, when he served as offensive coordinator at Rice and 2011, when he worked as the co-offensive coordinator under Turner Gill at Kansas.

The 2011 season was Beaty’s second stint at KU. He also coached receivers under former KU coach Mark Mangino in 2008 and 2009.

During those two seasons, Beaty helped Briscoe and Kerry Meier develop into future NFL draft picks. Meier, who was taken in the fifth round of the 2010 NFL Draft, received all-Big 12 accolades in 2008 and 2009, while Briscoe, a sixth-round selection in the 2010 NFL Draft, was an All-American and first team all-Big 12 pick in 2009. In 2008, five different KU players delivered 15 100-yard receiving games. Among the school records set by KU wide receivers in 2008 were season receptions, game receptions, season yards, game yards, and season touchdowns.

With All-American Mike Evans leading the way in 2013, Beaty helped Texas A&M’s receivers set team records for receiving yards, receiving touchdowns and completion percentage. That year, Texas A&M was the only team in the nation with four 50-catch, 600-yard receivers.

Evans set the A&M record with 1,394 receiving yards and matched the receiving touchdowns record with 12. He also shattered and re-broke the single-game receiving record with 279 yards against Alabama and 287 yards against Auburn. Evans went on to become the Aggies’ first wide receiver to be selected in the first round of the NFL Draft.

“Coach Beaty is one of the most genuine people I’ve ever known, and he really cares about his players,” said Evans, the most recent first-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer. “On the field, he’s a great coach with a lot of energy and he’s fun to be around. He will always push you to be your best.”

Beaty’s connections in Texas and overall recruiting record was what attracted KU and Texas A&M to him in the first place and, on Friday, A&M coach Sumlin said Beaty had not missed a beat since joining the Aggies in 2012.

“David is a great recruiter, a great coach and a great man,” Sumlin said in a release. “He was one of the first people I hired at Texas A&M and he’s been a huge part of what we’ve been able to accomplish here. He’s earned this opportunity to be a head coach, and I believe he will do a tremendous job with the Jayhawks.”

More on Beaty’s return to KU:

• Tom Keegan’s column on what Beaty brings to the job

• Instant reaction from Matt Tait on the many reasons Beaty seems to be a good hire for KU

• A Tom Keegan blog that includes a past video interview with KU’s new coach

• A Nick Krug photo gallery from Friday night’s KU basketball game that includes a few shots of Beaty as he spoke to the Allen Fieldhouse crowd at halftime

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.