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In theory, this should’ve worked. 

In theory, if you’re a place like Kansas, and you’re not going to get the Alabama-level five-star prospects coming your way, you need a head coach with a decided schematic advantage who can take whatever players he can get to make the machine go. He’s supposed to be the epitome of the “recruit to a type” cliché, and instead Charlie Weis tried to patch things together to find an offense, and it didn’t work – it didn’t come close. In a Big 12 with Baylor, and Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, and West Virginia, if you’re not going to bring the firepower, you’d better have a killer defense, and Kansas had neither.

Weis was an interesting shot at greatness that might have seemed like a good idea, but obviously failed miserably because he just isn’t a college football head coach. He might have struggled in the offensive coordinator world after getting launched from Notre Dame, but that’s more of his area of expertise. Being in charge of a whole program? No, that’s not his thing, but more importantly, if you’re going to hire a coach specifically because he’s supposed to be an offensive mastermind, have an offense. And that was the biggest problem. 

His teams just weren’t fun. 

Obviously it all comes down to wins and losses, and Weis won a grand total of three games against FBS teams during his tenure. During his time, last year’s 31-19 win over West Virginia was the only victory over a team from a Power 5 conference, and it was the only Big 12 win. But it was more than that. 

It’s one thing to be like an Indiana and know who you are as a basketball school that’s always going to struggle to find a football identity, but at least the team has come up with phenomenal offense under head coach Kevin Wilson. At least it’s entertaining, and at least it’s fun-bad. Kansas football has simply been bad, and considering Mark Mangino proved that it actually is possible to win there at a high level, and other coaches like Glen Mason proved that it’s possible to at least be good enough to go bowling, being the tenth-best team in a ten team league isn’t good enough anymore. Unlike the Notre Dame situation, Weis wasn’t going to keep getting more chances – it was time. 

Weis was never known as a workhorse as a recruiter, and he has always fit the pro mold far better than the role as a backslapping, rubber chicken circuit college figurehead, but again, if the success was there, nothing else would’ve mattered. Instead, his offense failed to hit the 400 yard mark at any point last season, and while it worked against SE Missouri State to start this year, there wasn’t any hope in blowout losses to Duke and Texas scoring just three points in the two games.

With the meat of the Big 12 slate ahead, it was time to get ahead of the game and make it known that the Kansas gig was open. It was time to show that fan base that yeah, the administration got it and understood that there needed to be a change. 

Kansas tried the hot coach route, but Turner Gill’s tenure was a total disaster. The program tried the smart, legendary figure route, and now Weis is launched. Whatever it does next, Kansas has to find an identity again, and it has to find a coach who can make the program relevant and interesting. If Art Briles could do that at Baylor, and if Mark Stoops can start to do that at Kentucky, and if David Cutcliffe could do that at Duke, and if Wilson can do that at Indiana, then it could certainly happen at Kansas.