KU Jayhawks AD Jeff Long expresses ‘confidence’ in Les Miles despite 0-5 football team
The results on the field have not been pretty midway through Les Miles’ second season as head football coach at Kansas.
The Jayhawks, who had spring practice canceled and voluntary summer workouts disrupted because of the COVID-19 pandemic, have stumbled to an 0-5 record, 0-4 in the Big 12, entering Saturday’s 11 a.m. home game against No. 23-ranked Iowa State (3-2, 3-1).
The average margin of defeat has been 30 points for a KU team that’s coming off a 55-14 blowout loss to rival Kansas State on Saturday in Manhattan.
“I want you to know five games in this year I love our guys,” KU athletic director Jeff Long said Wednesday in providing what resembled a state-of-the-program message to fans during the first half of football coach Miles’ weekly Hawk Talk radio show.
“They are fighting,” Long added of the players and coaches. “They are Jayhawks. We need to support them and stand behind them, be positive and help us pull this program through.”
Long offered his complete support to Miles, who has compiled a 3-14 record since being hired by Long on Nov. 18, 2018.
“I have just as much confidence in Coach Miles and his staff as I did the first day I hired him,” said Long, who signed Miles to a five-year contract. “We have been under-resourced in our program for eight to 10 years. We are not going to make that up in one year, in one season, in two seasons. It doesn’t work that way,” added Long, noting KU is still under the 85 scholarship limit.
“We’re going to have to build and we are. We’ve seen the other situations where maybe the coaches are going to start (rebuilding) with high school players, but then when the success doesn’t come, the pressure mounts — the pressure to succeed — and then we go the route of junior college players or transfers or doing those kind of things. We’re not going to do that.
“Coach Miles has my commitment. I shared that when I took the (AD) position with Chancellor (Douglas) Girod. There’s a commitment here to do this thing the right way. Trust me good things are happening,” Long added of recruiting primarily high school players.
Long pointed to young talent assembled by Miles and his assistants in recruiting the last two years.
For instance … the first two recruiting classes for Miles have produced 16 players who have started at least one game. In all, 32 players from those two classes have appeared in a game for KU. Fifteen of the 18 players signed by Miles in 2019 have played in a game for KU. This season, 17 true scholarship freshmen have played in at least one game.
Four true freshmen — Jalon Daniels, Karon Prunty, Daniel Hishaw and Lawrence Arnold — have each started a game in 2020.
Daniels, who turns 18 Thursday, is the only true freshman in the country this season to pass for 200 or more yards and rush for two touchdowns in the same game (vs. K-State). Prunty leads all freshmen nationally with six pass breakups. Redshirt freshman Marcus Harris is tied for seventh among all freshmen nationally with 5 1/2 tackles-for-loss. Sophomore Kenny Logan is second in the Big 12 in solo tackles per game at 5.8. He’s fifth in the league in overall tackles per game at 8.0..
“I know we’ve lost here for a long time,” Long said. “I know our fans are frustrated. I know they are impatient because they’ve been told time after time to be patient and I understand that. But I want you to know this is a different program that we’re running now. We said from the beginning we’re starting a four, five-year process. I’m not making that up now because we’ve lost some games. That has been been the plan. We are working that plan. We are doing it the right way with the right kind of student-athletes,” he added again stressing the plan of recruiting high school players with perhaps the possibility of adding a transfer or two this offseason when the rule changes to allow players to transfer one time and gain immediate eligibility at their new school.
Long said he has heard from some fans who have noticed the 66-year-old Miles’ calm demeanor on the sidelines.
“I know I’ve gotten some people (who are) concerned. They’ll say, ‘Why isn’t Coach Miles more demonstrative?’ That’s not his style. That never has been his style,” Long said. “When he was building Oklahoma State that wasn’t his style. When he won the national championship at LSU that wasn’t his style. He’s looking for positive things in a negative situation and I think this team needs that more than anything. The psychology of coaching that coach Miles brings, it leads to trust. He knows how to do this. There’s nothing about X’s and O’s right now. It’s all about getting players, developing them, getting them in the system; getting them to learn, getting them prepared for the future to compete,” Long added.
Long, who is in charge of keeping the athletic department afloat during a year in which revenues figure to be down drastically because of the pandemic, addressed KU’s donors on Hawk Talk.
“We’ve had a great number of donors help us with the ‘Break the Cycle’ campaign. We could not do it without them,” Long said of the fundraising campaign that according to the athletic department is “for additional operational needs to take Kansas Football to the next level.”
“I know they are frustrated too,” he added of donors, “but stick with us. Stick with the game plan. Stick with the process and we will come out a strong program in the not too distant future,” Long added.
