The Kansas University coaching triumverate of head coach TUrner Gill, left, defensive coordinator Carl Torbush, center, and offensive coordinator Chuck Long have served on a first-year staffs 17 times in their careers, so they’re accustomed to the special trials that come with first-year regimes.

Ames, Iowa ? Among them, the three most visible coaches on Kansas University’s football staff have experienced 17 seasons of first-year football during their time in the coaching profession.

In some cases — five to be exact — Turner Gill, Chuck Long and Carl Torbush were the head coaches in those situations, asked each time to introduce a new culture and a different attitude at their new schools.

In others, the trio joined on as an assistant to a head coach who was looking to do the same thing. Their experience, which has taken them from college football schools as grand as Nebraska and Alabama to smaller, struggling programs like Buffalo and Louisiana Tech, makes the three KU coaches a bit of an authority on first-year transitions.

What they’re going through now, with the 2-5 Jayhawks in the middle of one of the roughest stretches in school history, is reminiscent of what they remember seeing all those times before at different schools across the country.

“The challenges this year are really very consistent with my first year with (Iowa head coach) Kirk Ferentz,” said Long, who spent a season with Ferentz before moving on to Oklahoma. “We went 1-10. We set a school record for the most losses in school history. And trust me, it was a volatile deal. You can imagine the talk, you can imagine the fans. Wives didn’t even go to games with their kids. But under Kirk’s direction, much like with Turner right now, our staff stayed steady and consistent and never wavered from our philosophy.”

The Turner Gill Philosophy has been a big part of what this staff has tried to preach during its short time in Lawrence. To the current Jayhawks, that philosophy has stressed accountability, hard work, team chemistry and enjoying the college football experience. Gill and his staff have adopted the B.E.L.I.E.V.E. acronym as their mission statement, with each letter emphasizing an element of what they want to get done at Kansas.

It’s something that worked for Gill at Buffalo and something he believes will work here, too. Because of that, he refuses to veer off course too much too soon.

“You always have to adjust,” Gill said. “But I can’t say there has been a really big adjustment to who I am or how I’ve gone about doing my business. As you continue to know your players, what makes them go, what makes them tick, what motivates them, you do make a few adjustments, but as far as the overall concept and the basis of what we’re trying to get done, that doesn’t change.”

According to Long and Torbush, that’s how it should be. Both have seen the ups and downs of first-year transitions and both say there are several right ways to do things and one glaring wrong way.

“I think where the staff gets in trouble is where they go, ‘Oh, we’ve got to try something else,’ and it just goes off on all these tangents,” Long said. “But I learned as much from that year (at Iowa) as I did from a national championship season (at Oklahoma in 2000) in terms of setting a foundation, setting a mission and staying with it.”

Today, Ferentz is regarded as one of the top coaches in America, and the Hawkeyes consistently reside in the Top 25 and in contention for Big Ten titles.

As for Torbush, the man who spent 10 years coaching under current Texas coach Mack Brown — and then succeeded him — at North Carolina, he, too, said the big picture is the most important thing for this staff to focus on if it hopes to stay at Kansas for a while.

“I’m just being honest,” he said. “But if everything were perfect, we wouldn’t be here. And that’s what happens at most programs.”

Gill and his staff know that sticking to the party line isn’t always fun for the fans to hear. Heck, it’s not even that much fun for them to say.

“Would I rather be winning ballgames? Absolutely,” Torbush said.

But these guys have been around the block. They’ve seen bad turn good and good turn ugly. Because of it, they’re not quick to panic, even when things go woefully wrong. As odd as it might sound, there’s a certain amount of comfort involved with having been through it all before.

“Oh, gosh mighty, yes,” said Torbush, recalling his start at UNC with Brown. “Two 1-10s. I’m not talking about one, I’m talking about two. You had a great coach in Mack Brown, who was great with the alumni, great with the athletic director, who had objectives and goals and he didn’t vary from it. He just kept right on going. It was hard on him and the rest of us. But, if you bought stock in that program in the first year, you would’ve been a millionaire by the third year.”

Does the amateur stock broker advise the same here?

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “It’s like lifting weights; you may be weak when you start, but hopefully two years down the road you’re a strong guy that runs faster and is tougher mentally and physically.”