Kansas passes the Central Michigan referendum -- which, really, says it all right there
LAWRENCE, Kan. -- If Charlie Weis is on the hot seat, it's news to Charlie Weis.
Although, to be fair, so is pretty much everything else on the table.
"I'm sleeping in my office and I have the computer off," the embattled Kansas football coach said after Saturday's 24-10 win over Central Michigan. Then he grinned. "I'm oblivious to the real world. I barely know what's going on with ISIS, to tell you the truth."
And there's your sound bite, America. Have at it.
"And I think -- not to use a coaching phrase, but the guys that I've worked with, they always believed in what they used to call the 'bunker mentality,'" Weis continued. "Just got to work your way out of it."
Coming off a 41-3 shellacking at Duke last weekend, the usual sharp, pointy objects came out again, from all corners. So did the buzzards, as well as the short lists full of hypothetical replacements, given that it was Weis' 21st loss in 27 games with the program. One esteemed national college football columnist even tossed Mack Brown's name onto the pile, for pity's sake.
Only in Lawrence, Kan., is Central Michigan -- a crew coming off a 40-3 loss to Syracuse -- considered a "must-win" test, but there you go.
So: Now that they passed it, thanks to two touchdown throws from quarterback Montell Cozart and a 14-0 shutout in the fourth quarter, what next?
Was it enough? Is Uncle Charlie safe for a while, or for just another week, with an eminently beatable Texas team -- speaking of ol' Mack -- on the docket here next weekend?
"I mean, obviously, people are going to talk," linebacker Ben Heeney said. "When we get blown out, people are going to say things. I don't pay attention to all that stuff. I just try to focus on the game that we have ahead and it worked out really well for us."
"Worked out," sure. "Really well," that depends.
For three quarters, KU-CMU was an absolute barn-burner. If you happened to be into really, really ugly barns.
On the first rush of the tilt, Jayhawks wideout Tony Pierson took a handoff, turned up through a massive hole and shot to daylight for a 74-yard score. The hosts ran it 10 more times for a combined minus-5 yards the rest of the first half. After taking a 7-0 lead after just one play, the next 33 plays accounted for all of 95 yards.
So the start thing, the Jayhawks have down pat. And, finally, there was a little life at the end, too, thanks to two fourth-quarter scores -- the first on a 60-yard catch-and-run from Cozart to Justin McCay to break a 10-10 deadlock with 13:23 left in the contest, and the clincher coming with 1:58 left, when Corey Avery took a Cozart screen and zipped for a 30-yard score to push the cushion to 23-10.
"We just focused all week on just playing hard," said Heeney, a Jayhawk hammer win or lose. "And I think the emotion just came out because of the game (at Duke) last week. You know, that's not how we wanted to portray our team, and I think we played with a lot of emotion (on Saturday)."
An electric crowd, though -- not so much. And maybe you attach some caveats there: It was a hotter-than-usual, muggier-than-usual late September afternoon, with the threat of rain looming after the first quarter. The Royals are in their first, honest-to-God pennant race in 29 years and were, at the time, hosting Detroit in a critical day game. But of the 34,822 announced at Memorial Stadium, the crowd looked to be about 65 percent of that, if that. And that's if you were being kind.
So KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger still has to ask hard questions, such as whether loyalty now is worth, potentially, more empty seats later. The urban myth is that there are too many alimony payments going around with other failed football marriages for another trigger to be pulled, although word on the street is that former coaches such as Turner Gill and Mark Mangino are off the books, and have been for a while.
But remember this, too: Going through your third coach in six years -- the buyout for the last two years of Weis' deal is roughly $5 million -- sends all kinds of messages, none of them particularly kind to Zenger. It says the A.D. got it wrong; that the A.D. has a hair trigger; that the foundation in place might be more trouble than the paycheck is worth; or some combination of all three.
Zenger is a football man -- he cut his teeth as a staffer under Bill Snyder at Kansas State -- at a basketball school in a basketball town with a basketball fan base. Which is not to say it can't work, but it's sort of an Avis deal -- you have to try harder. Or smarter. And the ceiling is, more often than not, lower. But not always. Exhibit A: Kansas State, pretty much any year under Snyder. Exhibit B: Baylor, of late, under Art Briles. It's amazing what the perfect coach, the perfect system and the perfect quarterback can do in tandem, when the stars align.
On the other hand, if you trot over to the college football database at Sports-Reference.com, they keep a little stat called simple rating system, or SRS, a power rating used to measure the quality of a particular team in a particular year based on its score differential and the strength of its relative schedule. It's not a decisive measure of different teams from different eras, but it's instructive, at the least.
Lookin' good! Check out our gallery of Big 12 cheerleaders.
According to SRS, of the 20 worst teams in KU history, Weis has been at the helm for three of them. That's tied for the most of any Jayhawk football coach, a dubious honor shared with Gwinn Henry, who went 9-27 at KU from 1939-42.
More fun facts: Glen Mason helmed KU's worst-ever SRS team, with a minus-15.45 rating during a 1-10 year in '88. And Bob Valesente's two squads in '86 and '87 make up two of the bottom eight. And Weis' 1-11 team in '12 is rated higher (minus-6.70) than his 3-9 bunch last year (minus-8.58), so maybe we need to take these things with more than a few grains of salt.
Although it probably doesn't help matters when you realize that of the 17 junior-college imports brought in as part of Weis' ballyhooed class of 2013, only nine remain on the roster. Or when the official KU football Twitter account, according to SB Nation, takes a moment to actually -- even accidentally -- favorite this:
#jointhechant so long as the chant is Fire Weis
— RockChalkTalk (@RockChalkTalk) September 20, 2014
"You go dig yourself in," Weis said, "and try to dig yourself out."
There's Charlie, in his office, computer off, shoveling away while the rest of the world is busy burying him alive. Then again, when Central Michigan in Year 3 is considered a referendum on your administration, the premise sort of speaks for itself.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
