Larry Brown Sports

Charlie Weis continues to have issues with the student newspaper at Kansas University.

The Jayhawks football coach expressed his displeasure with the The University Daily Kansan last week for running a cover image that called the Jayhawks “Road Kill” for Kansas State prior to last Saturday’s game.

Weis wrote the following two tweets in response to the cover:

Team slammed by our own school newspaper. Amazing! No problem with opponents paper or local media. You deserve what you get! But, not home!

— Coach Charlie Weis (@CoachWeisKansas) October 4, 2012

I personally could care less. You are what are. On the other hand, if I don’t support the players good or bad, who will??

— Coach Charlie Weis (@CoachWeisKansas) October 4, 2012

The paper’s cover proved prescient; Kansas was crushed 56-16 by Kansas State.

Though Weis should be more concerned with the status of his 1-4 football team, he seems preoccupied with the student newspaper’s football writer.

According to a story published in the Daily Kansan, the football team’s media relations director met with Blake Schuster, who wrote the article accompanied by the road kill image, to warn him against asking Weis questions during a Tuesday press conference.

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If Ole Miss losing to Jacksonville State was the biggest upset of the first college football weekend, then Kansas suffered the second biggest upset loss. The Jayhawks were inept offensively in a 6-3 defeat by North Dakota State. Many people instantly began wondering about first-year head coach Turner Gill following such a poor performance. Whatever doubts we had were erased a week later.

Gill switched quarterbacks and running backs and saw huge dividends offensively. Redshirt freshman quarterback Jordan Webb went 18-29 for 178 yards and 3 touchdowns plus a pick. True freshman running back James Sims had 102 yards on 17 carries plus a touchdown as the Jayhawks won 28-25 over Georgia Tech.

It’s hard to say that the team has made a big turnaround offensively because they only put up 319 total yards, but the four touchdowns is the big number. Kansas took advantage of a kickoff that went out of bounds, a 13-yard punt, and a roughing the passer penalty that aided its scores.

Georgia Tech really had a good shot at coming back to tie it or win it late but they committed a 5-yard penalty on 4th and 3 and were unable to convert on 4th and 8 with about a minute left. Josh Nesbitt was only 5-for-15 passing. If he could complete a pass here or there they would have at least tied, but I guess that’s what you get with a triple option quarterback. Tech’s loss certainly was Kansas’ gain, and it has taken the pressure off Turner Gill early in the season.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Orlin Wagner

Thank goodness — I’m out of my misery. As I declared two-thirds of the way into this hideous mess, we were witnessing the worst college football season ever. I have no doubts. The fact that we have a two-loss national championship team is a joke. I’m not buying it. The fact that no team was good enough to go undefeated is sad. The fact that we couldn’t find more than one respectable one-loss program is sad. And most of all, the fact that everyone is screaming for a playoff now, not to mention the fact that everyone is rushing to stack their schedules with patsies, is wrong.

There is no right way to arrange post-season play in college football. Heck, I’m not even fond of March Madness. I’m big on the regular season; teams should prove over the course of the long haul that they are superior to their competition. I’m not keen on the idea of teams getting hot at the exact right time to get some hardware. That’s what I’ve always loved about college football — one loss and you’re done. What could be better than that? Every single week is a playoff the way I see it. We have 13 weeks of playoffs! Why would you want to cheapen that?

I still believe firmly that schools should continue to play difficult non-conference schedules in order to prove their mettle. I also believe that this happened to be a fluke, crappy season where no one team separated itself. Perhaps I’m most disappointed in USC. Did anything throw off the system more than them losing to Stanford? I think not. And if conferences want their schools to have a better shot at reaching a title game, they should eliminate their conference championship games. Just what we need — one more difficult obstacle in the road of perfection. This was the worst college football season ever not because it shows we need a playoff. It was the worst ever because every single team disappointed in one way or another.

There are some things in college football I just can’t get down with. This would be one of them. When it comes to the national title picture, I’m a snob; I want to see big-time programs and dominant teams. I don’t like seeing teams luck out because their conference was weak and they played an easy non-conference schedule. Which brings us to the upcoming Kansas/Missouri game this weekend. The thought that the winner of this game could have a one-way ticket to the title game in New Orleans makes me just a wee bit uneasy.

Take the Kansas Jayhawks for instance. They played perennial powerhouses Central Michigan, Southeastern Louisiana, Toledo, and Florida International to pad their record at 4-0 to start the year. Nice little confidence-booster type games that made their players feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Missou at least took on Illinois on the road non-conference, but their schedule was hardly daunting. Oh yeah, and they’ve also already lost once to Oklahoma.

Should Kansas win this weekend and make it into the title game by winning the Big 12 conference championship game, I won’t say that they haven’t earned their way in — at that point they will have. I’m just disappointed that it will have sent the wrong message, that scheduling cupcakes is in your best interest once again. We’ve come a long way since the mid-90s to get past that point. Now I have nothing left but to hope that the winner this weekend loses to the Big 12 South champion in the conference title game. Kansas or Missouri playing for a national title? I just can’t fathom it.

I had a caller over the weekend crying on the phone because Nebraska got blown out by Kansas Saturday. How could they dare hang 76 on his beloved Cornhuskers, he whined? Well, on the same weekend that Notre Dame suffered the ultimate form of disappointment — losing to Navy at home for the first time since the effing Revolutionary War — another team got the proper dose of medicine it deserved. Nebraska, the biggest culprit when it came to running up the score and embarrassing its opponents throughout the mid-90s, got a 76 spot hung on them by the Kansas Jayhawks. Yes, the same proud basketball school which might not even score 76 in a given hoops game, rang up a 76 on Nebraska, and it was beautiful.

This is the same Nebraska powerhouse that went 8-0 against KU in the 90s under Tom Osborne, outscoring the Jayhawks by a 454-86 margin. They slapped Kansas around 63-7 in 1996 and probably never thought twice about it. That same ’96 season, Arizona State avenged an embarrassing 77-28 loss the previous year in Lincoln with a 19-0 Jake Plummer special in Tempe. It might take more than a decade, but what goes around obviously comes around. Getting crushed 76-39 by Kansas — a former laughingstock of college football — is unheard of in the Big 12 world. It was well-deserved and well overdue. Welcome to 4-6 hell Nebraska. Sucks to be down, doesn’t it?

(Photo Courtesy Charlie Riedel/AP)

Thanks to EDSBS and FanHouse, we have some great video from Kansas’ win over Central Michigan this weekend. Check out this punt return for a touchdown in the second quarter by Raimond (yes, there’s an “I” in his name) Pendelton:

That made the score 28-0, with Kansas going on to win it 52-7. I love it when coaches do that crap — no showboating, no penalty flags, none of that garbage. Marvin Lewis should learn from Mangino. That … was brilliant.