While Weis pitched his past, Beaty can sell KU's football future

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 12:18 a.m. ET

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LAWRENCE, Kan. -- The hot mid-major whiffed. The offensive wizard left his wand in the golf cart. So this time around, Kansas football is going to cast its lot with a salesman.

Which, in hindsight, Charlie Weis was not. And is not. And never will be. Weis' big pitch was to say something clipped and funny and Jersey and flash his Super Bowl rings, or Tom Brady's cell number, or some selfie with Jon Bon Jovi.

Would you buy a used car from Uncle Charlie?

Good football mind. Not a salesman.

David Beaty, by all reports, is both. But especially the latter, and the latter is key.

For the past two years, the newest football coach for the Jayhawks -- the program's fifth since 2009 -- has worked as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Texas A&M, Kevin Sumlin's lead handshake. And the top line of the resume grabs the eyeballs, well enough: The Aggies' recruiting class for 2015 ranks fifth nationally on Scout.com's rankings. The '14 class was seventh; the '13 crop checked in at No. 6. Average slot: sixth.

During that same stretch, KU was 55th, 63rd and 55th. Average slot: 58th.

"We need people who can reach out to the community, to the university and exhibit social skills and people skills," former Jayhawks quarterback David Jaynes, who served on the 12-member advisory committee that assisted athletic director Sheahon Zenger in the vetting process, told FOXSportsKansasCity.com. "And I think that, in general, is part of being a head coach in college.

"If you don't like that, then go to the NFL. Because you can close the door in the NFL and hide from the rest of the world and be successful. But this is college, and it's a different world."

Weis can be flippant and aloof; Beaty is affable and direct. To Jaynes, he epitomized everything that Uncle Charlie was not: young (44), energetic, vibrant, aggressive without being off-putting, detailed without being pedantic.

Lookin' good! Check out our gallery of Big 12 cheerleaders.

"Sometimes in life, you run into situations where you are impacted viscerally," Jaynes said of Beaty, who will be formally introduced at a news conference Monday morning in Lawrence. "And your heart starts beating a little faster.

"David Beaty laid out a lot of things -- his expectations, his visions, his demands on himself, the demands that he's going to place on his assistants, why he can be successful, why he was the right guy; I could go on and on about a lot of things.

"You cannot make decisions on who to hire -- I don't care if it's in football, or business, or what it is -- strictly on winning and losing, whether someone was an offensive coordinator for five years or six years, or whatever. This is about: Can this person have a huge, positive impact toward what we need them to do? And for me, it was just very obvious the answer is, 'Yes.'"

Of course, the same things could be said of Clint Bowen, the interim head coach who had to take the reins when Weis hit the road, rallying the troops but dropping seven of eight Big 12 contests along the way. The popular Jayhawk alum and Lawrence native agreed to stay on as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator -- a designation so significant that it was the second sentence of the first statement ever released by the university on Beaty's behalf.

"I am especially excited that Clint Bowen has agreed to stay on as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator," Beaty's statement early Friday evening read. "Clint will be a huge part of our success going forward and I am fortunate to have him on my staff."

Beaty knows the territory. He understands Bowen's value, Bowen's place, Bowen's insight, having worked in Lawrence on the staffs of former coaches Mark Mangino (2008-09) and Turner Gill ('11) himself. What KU is, and what it isn't, he gets. Lawrence is a different place relative to its Big 12 peers -- that doesn't make it bad, it doesn't make it good, it just makes it unique. It's not Kansas State; it's not Missouri. As with peers such as Kentucky and North Carolina and Duke and Indiana, the power and prestige factor is flipped, where basketball is the front porch for the athletic department and, to a large degree, the university as a whole.

That's going to turn off some coaching candidates, now and, to be blunt, forever. That's not to say you can't win, or can't compete consistently -- Glen Mason managed to co-exist with Roy Williams; Mangino did the same with Bill Self.

While Jaynes declined to discuss details of the interview process, or other candidates, he admits to being wary of green-lighting another Weis-like coach with another Weis-like contract.

"We really wanted someone who was going to come to Kansas because of their burning desire to be successful," the former KU signal-caller noted, "not because they want to finish their career with a very lucrative payout."

Sorry, Charlie.

If Beaty's stock takes off, the way Art Briles' has with Baylor, well -- that's the point, isn't it?

"We don't want to be in a situation where, four or five years from now, no one wants our coach," Jaynes said.

Sources familiar with the situation told FOXSportsKansasCity.com that as many as five candidates were ultimately presented to the advisory committee for interviews. Of that group, three were believed to be Beaty, Bowen and another ex-KU assistant, Ohio State co-coordinator Ed Warriner.

Then again, hindsight can be a funny business, especially in the coaching game. Weis was a "name," whatever that means, but he wasn't a fit. The quarterback fixer couldn't fix a single one here, and in the pass-happy Big 12, that flaw proved both damning and fatal.

The state of Texas is rich in quarterbacks of all shapes and sizes, and the first big task for Beaty is to figure out a way to procure the services of three or four of them before Baylor comes calling. And this is playing to Beaty's strength, considering that the man worked at several high schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex before taking his first college gig at Rice.

This hire is about opening pipelines, building bridges of steel instead of straw.

He'll pound the beat. He'll make the calls. He'll communicate. He'll teach. He'll network like a fiend.

Dezmon Briscoe? Beaty.

Kerry Meier? Beaty.

Mike Evans, now a human highlight machine with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Beaty.

"In college, you can be the best coach in the world," Jaynes said. "But if you don't have the players, you are not going to win."

With Weis on the trail, the pitch was his past. With Beaty, it's about the future. And for the Jayhawks, that future just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.

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