ROYC75
11-07-2007, 09:54 PM
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2007-11-06-kansas-jayhawks-bcs_N.htm
Kansas shows few signs of weakness in BCS ascent
By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY
LAWRENCE, Kan. — John Zook lives in retirement outside Atlanta, several states and more than half a lifetime removed from the University of Kansas and the college football program he once captained.
For a long time, the distance suited him fine.
He was an All-America defensive end, one of the stars — along with quarterback Bobby Douglass and running back John Riggins — of the last KU team to so much as share a conference championship. That was back in 1968. But the Jayhawks largely flatlined after those guys moved on, their '69 Orange Bowl appearance drifting into distant memory, losing records becoming a wearying, four-decades-long norm.
The past 38 years have brought just nine winning records and five bowl appearances.
"I wouldn't really volunteer that I was a Kansas alum in the past," says Zook, one of six KU players taken in the '69 NFL draft, begetting an 11-year pro career in Atlanta and St. Louis. "If I was asked a second time, I'd admit it and then quickly change the topic to basketball."
The past couple of months have sucked him back in.
With a 9-0 start and No. 5 ranking in the polls — and most remarkably, a climb to No. 4 in the Bowl Championship Series standings and candidacy for a national title — Kansas embodies a 2007 season that has turned fortunes and convention upside down.
The Jayhawks are one of only three unbeaten teams left in the Division I-A (now Bowl Subdivision) along with No. 1 Ohio State and No. 12 Hawaii. Win again Saturday at Oklahoma State, a team that has beaten them five consecutive times, and they'll find themselves 10-0 for the first time since Fielding Yost spent a year as their coach in 1899.
Zook, now 60, watched on television last weekend as the Jayhawks overran Nebraska 76-39, moving to 5-0 in the Big 12 Conference. Suddenly, he's weighing a trip to the league's Dec. 1 championship game in San Antonio, should KU get there, or to a yet-to-be-determined bowl.
"I was always optimistic, and I never gave up on them," Zook says. "But I wasn't sure this would ever happen."
Since beginning its ascent with a 52-7 rout of Central Michigan on Sept. 1, Kansas has evolved from question mark to curiosity to legitimized Big 12 contender. The Jayhawks, it seems, are doing everything well.
They're the nation's second-highest scoring team behind Hawaii, averaging better than 46 points, and the second-stingiest on defense behind Ohio State, allowing a little more than 13. Only Cincinnati has collected more turnovers than the 27 forced by KU, and only seven teams have given up fewer than its 11 in nine games. None has been less-penalized.
Softer slate raises questions
Undersized quarterback Todd Reesing made his first start against Central Michigan, and now is generating Heisman Trophy talk. The 5-10 sophomore already has set a school record for touchdown passes, throwing six against Nebraska to hike his season total to 23. He'll take a string of four games without an interception into Oklahoma State.
The defense is 15 pounds a man lighter across the line than Texas' and nine lighter than Oklahoma's. But none of Kansas' five league opponents rushed for more than 79 yards. Eleven different players, including standout cornerback Aqib Talib, have made interceptions.
"We have playmakers. But we don't have an entire cast … that would be considered the prototype of outstanding Division I players," says coach Mark Mangino, who six years ago inherited a program that had reeled off six consecutive losing records. "We kind of have a bunch of kids that play hard. They understand team principles. (They're) a very unselfish group of kids, a very intelligent group of kids. … And they have a workmanlike personality to them, the ballclub as a whole.
"They stay on task. I don't have to coax them too much to do the right things. They do the right things."
There remains room to wonder about the Jayhawks. Their schedule featured four non-conference lightweights, didn't take KU out of the state until Oct. 20 and bypassed Big 12 powerhouses Oklahoma and Texas. USA TODAY's Jeff Sagarin ranks it 105th in 119-member I-A in degree of difficulty.
Kansas' ranking and reputation are built on wins at Kansas State, Colorado and Texas A&M and the historic humiliation of Nebraska, which never before had surrendered as many as 76 points. Those teams' records range from a middling 4-6 to 6-4.
Still, there's something to be said for surviving this season of uncommon attrition. It has given an opening at the top of the polls to a variety of traditional non-powers — from Kentucky to South Florida to California to Boston College — and only the Jayhawks have kept their footing.
"You've got to stay level-headed and realize where we've been and what it took to get here," says Derek Fine, a fifth-year senior tight end who had five catches against Nebraska. "It's one week to the next. If we mess up this week and don't do well, don't take care of business, all that's gone."
Coach has experience
Mangino has been through this careful process before. He was part of the Bill Snyder staff that transformed Kansas State from laughingstock to consistent winner in the '90s. From there, he went to Oklahoma and was Bob Stoops' assistant head coach and offensive coordinator as the Sooners ended a lull in their rich history by winning the 2000 national championship.
"We've talked for, what, 10 or 11 months now about how we want to do something special, how we want to be a really good football team, and it's starting to take shape," Mangino says. "But I'm more of the thought that we still have work to do. We have challenges ahead. Let's just stay on track here, keep at it. Let's not be caught up in all this stuff.
"When it's all said and done, it's what you did at the very end that matters the most."
The turnaround hasn't been immediate. Mangino's five-year record coming into this season was 25-35, including a disappointing 6-6 in 2006 after Kansas athletics director Lew Perkins handed his coach a new five-year contract guaranteeing him $1.5 million annually.
Given the friendly schedule, Perkins pointedly told The Kansas City Star in July, 6-6 wouldn't be satisfactory this season.
Of course, this wasn't the same as trying to kick-start Oklahoma. Kansas's Big Eight co-championship, with OU, in 1968 is its only conference title in the past 59 years. In 11 previous years of membership of the Big 12, the Jayhawks went 23-65 in league games and never finished better than fourth in the six-team North Division.
They haven't produced a first-team All-American since kicker Bruce Kallmeyer in 1983, and haven't had one at a playing position since quarterback David Jaynes in 1973. They've produced just one first-round NFL draft pick in the past 26 years (defensive tackle Dana Stubblefield in 1993).
"I didn't show up with a plan that said we had to win this many games in Year 5, Year 6. What happens if you don't win? What do you tell your players then?" Mangino says. "We came in with some very, very basic principles. As coaches, we were going to raise standards for the players in every way.
"We felt if we just stayed on track and didn't get distracted, didn't let anybody talk us out of it, good things would happen."
Mangino and his staff aren't reeling in eye-popping recruiting classes, but they've demonstrated a keen eye for underrated prospects. Reesing is a classic example, a high school star in Austin, Texas, who drew little to no in-state interest because of his height.
He has settled a position plagued for the past three seasons by injury and inconsistency, completing 61% of his passes with a lower interception rate — one every 73.5 throws — than all but four starting quarterbacks in I-A.
"He reminds me a lot of Doug Flutie," says Oklahoma State coach and former quarterback Mike Gundy. "(He's) a very effective player who moves around and makes plays. He's accurate when he throws the football, and he runs the ball well enough to be a threat."
Reesing also is one of eight KU starters — along with Talib, an All-America candidate who has three interceptions as a defensive back and four TD catches as a part-time receiver on offense — mined from Texas. Four came out of Oklahoma.
Turned out they didn't need to stay home to chase a national championship.
Kansas' No. 5 ranking in the USA TODAY coaches' and Associated Press media polls is its highest since '68. It's the fourth spot in the BCS' composite rankings that means more, though, and the Jayhawks can argue for improvement on that in the coming month. Looming is a Nov. 24 showdown with No. 6 Missouri and, most likely with a win there, a date with No. 5 Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game.
Emerge 13-0, and KU will move on to the BCS championship game in New Orleans or instigate a heated national debate as to why it didn't. No. 1-ranked Ohio State is immovable if the 10-0 Buckeyes win out. But the only other teams ahead of the Jayhawks in the BCS rankings, LSU and Oregon, are once-beaten.
Crazy, isn't it?
Title talk at Kansas. In football.
" 'Why not?' is how I kind of look at it," Fine says. "If you're going to dream, you might as well dream big."
Teammate Darrell Stuckey is a bit more wide-eyed. "We all kind of had that goal," says the sophomore safety, who has two interceptions and a couple of fumble recoveries. "But to actually see a goal … come true, it's breathtaking."
Contributing: Andy Gardiner
Kansas shows few signs of weakness in BCS ascent
By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY
LAWRENCE, Kan. — John Zook lives in retirement outside Atlanta, several states and more than half a lifetime removed from the University of Kansas and the college football program he once captained.
For a long time, the distance suited him fine.
He was an All-America defensive end, one of the stars — along with quarterback Bobby Douglass and running back John Riggins — of the last KU team to so much as share a conference championship. That was back in 1968. But the Jayhawks largely flatlined after those guys moved on, their '69 Orange Bowl appearance drifting into distant memory, losing records becoming a wearying, four-decades-long norm.
The past 38 years have brought just nine winning records and five bowl appearances.
"I wouldn't really volunteer that I was a Kansas alum in the past," says Zook, one of six KU players taken in the '69 NFL draft, begetting an 11-year pro career in Atlanta and St. Louis. "If I was asked a second time, I'd admit it and then quickly change the topic to basketball."
The past couple of months have sucked him back in.
With a 9-0 start and No. 5 ranking in the polls — and most remarkably, a climb to No. 4 in the Bowl Championship Series standings and candidacy for a national title — Kansas embodies a 2007 season that has turned fortunes and convention upside down.
The Jayhawks are one of only three unbeaten teams left in the Division I-A (now Bowl Subdivision) along with No. 1 Ohio State and No. 12 Hawaii. Win again Saturday at Oklahoma State, a team that has beaten them five consecutive times, and they'll find themselves 10-0 for the first time since Fielding Yost spent a year as their coach in 1899.
Zook, now 60, watched on television last weekend as the Jayhawks overran Nebraska 76-39, moving to 5-0 in the Big 12 Conference. Suddenly, he's weighing a trip to the league's Dec. 1 championship game in San Antonio, should KU get there, or to a yet-to-be-determined bowl.
"I was always optimistic, and I never gave up on them," Zook says. "But I wasn't sure this would ever happen."
Since beginning its ascent with a 52-7 rout of Central Michigan on Sept. 1, Kansas has evolved from question mark to curiosity to legitimized Big 12 contender. The Jayhawks, it seems, are doing everything well.
They're the nation's second-highest scoring team behind Hawaii, averaging better than 46 points, and the second-stingiest on defense behind Ohio State, allowing a little more than 13. Only Cincinnati has collected more turnovers than the 27 forced by KU, and only seven teams have given up fewer than its 11 in nine games. None has been less-penalized.
Softer slate raises questions
Undersized quarterback Todd Reesing made his first start against Central Michigan, and now is generating Heisman Trophy talk. The 5-10 sophomore already has set a school record for touchdown passes, throwing six against Nebraska to hike his season total to 23. He'll take a string of four games without an interception into Oklahoma State.
The defense is 15 pounds a man lighter across the line than Texas' and nine lighter than Oklahoma's. But none of Kansas' five league opponents rushed for more than 79 yards. Eleven different players, including standout cornerback Aqib Talib, have made interceptions.
"We have playmakers. But we don't have an entire cast … that would be considered the prototype of outstanding Division I players," says coach Mark Mangino, who six years ago inherited a program that had reeled off six consecutive losing records. "We kind of have a bunch of kids that play hard. They understand team principles. (They're) a very unselfish group of kids, a very intelligent group of kids. … And they have a workmanlike personality to them, the ballclub as a whole.
"They stay on task. I don't have to coax them too much to do the right things. They do the right things."
There remains room to wonder about the Jayhawks. Their schedule featured four non-conference lightweights, didn't take KU out of the state until Oct. 20 and bypassed Big 12 powerhouses Oklahoma and Texas. USA TODAY's Jeff Sagarin ranks it 105th in 119-member I-A in degree of difficulty.
Kansas' ranking and reputation are built on wins at Kansas State, Colorado and Texas A&M and the historic humiliation of Nebraska, which never before had surrendered as many as 76 points. Those teams' records range from a middling 4-6 to 6-4.
Still, there's something to be said for surviving this season of uncommon attrition. It has given an opening at the top of the polls to a variety of traditional non-powers — from Kentucky to South Florida to California to Boston College — and only the Jayhawks have kept their footing.
"You've got to stay level-headed and realize where we've been and what it took to get here," says Derek Fine, a fifth-year senior tight end who had five catches against Nebraska. "It's one week to the next. If we mess up this week and don't do well, don't take care of business, all that's gone."
Coach has experience
Mangino has been through this careful process before. He was part of the Bill Snyder staff that transformed Kansas State from laughingstock to consistent winner in the '90s. From there, he went to Oklahoma and was Bob Stoops' assistant head coach and offensive coordinator as the Sooners ended a lull in their rich history by winning the 2000 national championship.
"We've talked for, what, 10 or 11 months now about how we want to do something special, how we want to be a really good football team, and it's starting to take shape," Mangino says. "But I'm more of the thought that we still have work to do. We have challenges ahead. Let's just stay on track here, keep at it. Let's not be caught up in all this stuff.
"When it's all said and done, it's what you did at the very end that matters the most."
The turnaround hasn't been immediate. Mangino's five-year record coming into this season was 25-35, including a disappointing 6-6 in 2006 after Kansas athletics director Lew Perkins handed his coach a new five-year contract guaranteeing him $1.5 million annually.
Given the friendly schedule, Perkins pointedly told The Kansas City Star in July, 6-6 wouldn't be satisfactory this season.
Of course, this wasn't the same as trying to kick-start Oklahoma. Kansas's Big Eight co-championship, with OU, in 1968 is its only conference title in the past 59 years. In 11 previous years of membership of the Big 12, the Jayhawks went 23-65 in league games and never finished better than fourth in the six-team North Division.
They haven't produced a first-team All-American since kicker Bruce Kallmeyer in 1983, and haven't had one at a playing position since quarterback David Jaynes in 1973. They've produced just one first-round NFL draft pick in the past 26 years (defensive tackle Dana Stubblefield in 1993).
"I didn't show up with a plan that said we had to win this many games in Year 5, Year 6. What happens if you don't win? What do you tell your players then?" Mangino says. "We came in with some very, very basic principles. As coaches, we were going to raise standards for the players in every way.
"We felt if we just stayed on track and didn't get distracted, didn't let anybody talk us out of it, good things would happen."
Mangino and his staff aren't reeling in eye-popping recruiting classes, but they've demonstrated a keen eye for underrated prospects. Reesing is a classic example, a high school star in Austin, Texas, who drew little to no in-state interest because of his height.
He has settled a position plagued for the past three seasons by injury and inconsistency, completing 61% of his passes with a lower interception rate — one every 73.5 throws — than all but four starting quarterbacks in I-A.
"He reminds me a lot of Doug Flutie," says Oklahoma State coach and former quarterback Mike Gundy. "(He's) a very effective player who moves around and makes plays. He's accurate when he throws the football, and he runs the ball well enough to be a threat."
Reesing also is one of eight KU starters — along with Talib, an All-America candidate who has three interceptions as a defensive back and four TD catches as a part-time receiver on offense — mined from Texas. Four came out of Oklahoma.
Turned out they didn't need to stay home to chase a national championship.
Kansas' No. 5 ranking in the USA TODAY coaches' and Associated Press media polls is its highest since '68. It's the fourth spot in the BCS' composite rankings that means more, though, and the Jayhawks can argue for improvement on that in the coming month. Looming is a Nov. 24 showdown with No. 6 Missouri and, most likely with a win there, a date with No. 5 Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game.
Emerge 13-0, and KU will move on to the BCS championship game in New Orleans or instigate a heated national debate as to why it didn't. No. 1-ranked Ohio State is immovable if the 10-0 Buckeyes win out. But the only other teams ahead of the Jayhawks in the BCS rankings, LSU and Oregon, are once-beaten.
Crazy, isn't it?
Title talk at Kansas. In football.
" 'Why not?' is how I kind of look at it," Fine says. "If you're going to dream, you might as well dream big."
Teammate Darrell Stuckey is a bit more wide-eyed. "We all kind of had that goal," says the sophomore safety, who has two interceptions and a couple of fumble recoveries. "But to actually see a goal … come true, it's breathtaking."
Contributing: Andy Gardiner