ESPN host on KU football: ‘the most incompetent thing that I’ve seen in major sports’

Even Dan Le Batard admitted he didn’t expect to make Kansas football the focus of the start of his show on ESPN.

However, Le Batard apparently watched some of the Jayhawks’ 43-0 loss at TCU on Saturday night, and was stunned at what he saw. In case you didn’t hear: there was a running clock for the final 12:49 of the fourth quarter, so the game would end before severe weather arrived.

That’s why “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz” opened Monday with talk of KU football. Le Batard wasn’t trying to be mean when discussing the Jayhawks, but he was amazed at what he had watched on the nationally televised broadcast. Kansas is worse than the Browns, in Le Batard’s opinion.

“Even if you’re tempted to say the Browns (are worse), the Browns played yesterday and were in the game throughout the game. And it wasn’t fun and exciting,” Le Batard said. “In fact, what is the worst thing in sports if not Kansas football?

“What I was watching, that I saw happen this weekend, is Kansas football playing against TCU, in the fourth quarter they just went to a running clock because TCU at one point had 450 yards in offense and Kansas had minus-12. It’s sort of like, you’re a high school team and you’re playing college football. ...”

TCU ended up with 475 yards of offense, while KU had 21 yards, the fewest by an FBS team in the last 20 years. It was the Jayhawks’ 44th straight road defeat, tying the FBS record set by Western (Colo.) State from 1926-36.

It is likely no coincidence that quarterback Clayton Tune decommitted from Kansas after Saturday’s game.

It has been a rough stretch for KU, which is 1-6 this season and 3-28 since the start of 2015.

Le Batard noted the success of KU’s men’s basketball team, which has won 13 straight Big 12 titles.

“Kansas is a legitimate program in basketball and usually there is not this much difference, in fact, there can’t be this much difference between basketball and football at any school in America,” he said. “It’s not possible that there would be a bigger gulf at any school in America.”

Le Batard then called KU football a “nowhere tumbleweed program that has no chance. It is the most incompetent thing that I’ve seen in major sports.”

The opening discussion to the show went on for eight minutes, and Le Batard finished by saying that the state of KU is the one and only thing he knows about football these days.

“Look, this is the thing, I’m watching college football and pro football and I’m like, ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t know if anyone is any good out here.’ There are four college football teams that look good,” Le Batard said. “I don’t think there are any pro teams that are good. But I know one that’s bad. I know one thing: I know one that’s bad.

“There is only one thing I know about football being played in the modern age and it is that Kansas is bad. I don’t know anything with the same authority and absolutism that I know that.”

As if that wasn’t enough for KU football, the guys on ESPN’s “Pardon The Interruption” briefly talked about KU as well.

Tony Kornheiser said: “They are probably the worst power five football school in the country, don’t you think?”

Michael Wilbon’s response: “There is no question about it.”

This story was originally published October 24, 2017 at 9:54 AM.