Tom Keegan: Beaty adds spice to spring

By Tom Keegan     Mar 6, 2016

John Young
Kansas coach David Beaty meets with his quarterbacks during the first day of spring practice on Sunday, March 6, 2016, at the practice fields north of Memorial Stadium.

Coming off an 0-12 season and heading into one that will feature the smallest home crowds in decades, the Kansas University football program didn’t have much chance to generate any interest from the first day of spring practices.

Wrong!

David Beaty floored a small gathering of media inside the football complex late Sunday afternoon by announcing that he will coach quarterbacks and call the offensive plays.

Rob Likens, recruited to Kansas from California, where he was wide-receivers coach, remains the titular offensive coordinator, but in reality has been demoted to “a walk-around guy,” as Beaty put it.

The latest news means that only three of Beaty’s nine assistant coaches from his rookie season as a college head coach remain in their same roles: defensive coordinator Clint Bowen, chosen for Beaty by athletic director Sheahon Zenger as a thank you for serving as interim head coach; cornerbacks coach/co-defensive coordinator Kenny Perry; and offensive-line coach Zach Yenser.

When Beaty revealed the news, my brain flashed to Charlie Weis at the podium down the hall from where Beaty stood Saturday, announcing in mid-season of his second year that he had fired himself as offensive coordinator and divided the running and passing duties of the job between a couple of assistant coaches.

Beaty was doing the opposite, demoting his offensive coordinator, Likens, and replacing him with himself.

Beaty and Weis both made the mistake of thinking the scheme was a big part of the problem, a quick-fix read. The main problem is the personnel must be upgraded, and that takes more time than either coach gave himself. It takes recruiting and developing high school players, and that takes years.

Oh, well, give Beaty credit for sticking his neck on the line, because if the move flops, it will blow up in his and only his face.

As it stands, Beaty is either guilty of hiring the wrong offensive coordinator at the price of a guaranteed $1.05 million or making the wrong decision by turning him into a high-priced “walk-around guy.”

It seemed a strange time to make such a rash, quick-fix decision, especially given that Beaty was as secure as an 0-12 coach possibly could be for the simple reason that he was Zenger’s second hire, and rare is the AD who is granted a Mulligan. There is no such thing as a double Mulligan.

Plus, this is a football program desperately in need of stability, so nobody was going to push the panic button if Beaty took the slow-growth approach based on a stable coaching staff and high-school-heavy recruiting. He appears to be trending in the right direction in terms of recruiting focus, but a staff shake-up involving six of the nine full-time recruiting positions fails the stability test. Taking over the offensive reins fails the “let your coaches coach” test.

I fear that Beaty has made such a bold move he has started the ticking of the clock of judgment on his tenure and in turn that of Zenger’s far earlier than he needed it to start. I fear the coach has put too much on his plate too soon. He has one year of experience as a college head coach and one year as an offensive coordinator in college (Rice, 2010). The Owls ranked 87th among 128 Football Bowl Subdivision schools with 26.1 points per game and went 4-8 that season.

Now Beaty is going to juggle both jobs in the same year against a Big 12 schedule with a roster than went winless a year ago.

Beaty has made a gutsy gamble on himself, shoving all of his chips to the center of the table so early in the game. By doing so, he has accomplished the impossible and turned the erstwhile-easy-to-ignore 2016 Kansas football season into a fascinating experiment with such a high degree of difficulty rating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nws6Tv33xZg

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