Schedule squeezes Jayhawks

Rare Friday game means one less day of preparation for KU

There are no days off this week. Not for the Kansas University football players, and especially not for the coaching staff.

Bucking the tradition of Saturday college football, the Jayhawks will travel to Toledo for a Friday night game this week. Kickoff will be at 7 p.m., and the game will be televised on ESPN2.

With the quirky schedule comes an improvised compression of work in preparing for the Rockets. The normal day off of practice on Monday was scrapped. The coaches will stay at the office later than normal getting ready for what might be the toughest nonconference game of the season.

“We’ve got to crunch our schedule in,” KU coach Mark Mangino said. “We stay here late early in the week. We’ll just have to be here later because we have to speed everything up a day in terms of our scouting report, our introduction of schemes to the players, preparing the game plan and the practice schedule and film breakdowns.

“It’s more of a real crunch time for the coaching staff. For the players, I don’t think it’s that great of an imposition.”

Still, Friday’s game is a bit of an inconvenience – especially since Kansas has to reserve a big block of time for traveling to Ohio on Thursday. But it beats the alternative of playing on Thursday and really slicing into KU’s normal routine.

South Florida-KU on Fox Sports Net

Kansas University’s football game against South Florida on Sept. 23 will be televised by Fox Sports Net. Kickoff for the game at Memorial Stadium will be 6 p.m.

It will be the second straight week the Jayhawks play on television. Friday’s game at Toledo will be aired on ESPN2.

One other game – Nov. 25 at Missouri – is slotted for television at this point. That game will be on ABC.

Other Big 12 Conference games could be televised, however. The networks generally make their decisions 12 days in advance during normal weeks, with the option of waiting until six days in advance in some cases.

Since the Mid-America Conference has a mid-week television deal with ESPN, Kansas was aware for some time that this week’s matchup likely was going to be moved up, since BCS-level teams rarely travel to MAC stadiums for nonconference games.

Mangino said KU was given the choice of Thursday or Friday, and chose the latter because it was less stressful on the Jayhawks’ schedule. Kansas now will steal some of the spotlight from high school football, something Mangino regrets.

“I just didn’t think it would be fair to our program and our kids to come off the Saturday night game and travel on Wednesday to play a Thursday game,” Mangino said. “So in the best interest of our players, we agreed to play on Friday night.

“It’s a rarity for us. I’m a former high school coach. I like high school football on Friday nights and I like the focus to be there. I just had to make a decision that was best for our players.”

Other than bowl games, KU has never played a weeknight game in the Mangino era. The Rockets, meanwhile, are in the habit of it. They’ve played 18 weeknight games since 2002.

“It does take some adjustment,” Toledo coach Tom Amstutz said. “The times can be hard on the players, especially academically. But we make the adjustments and make it work. It’s been very good for our conference and very good for our program.”