Tom Keegan: Kansas football receives dynamic boost from Speedy Gonzalez

photo by: Nick Krug

Team wide receiver LaQuvionte Gonzalez (1) tears down the field for a touchdown during the Spring Game on Saturday, April 9, 2016 at Memorial Stadium.

Declining attendance in each of seven consecutive losing seasons. Coming off an 0-12 record. As visible as a speck of wine in the ocean compared to the perennial national powerhouse basketball program.

If ever a college football team needed a dynamic figure who makes you pay attention whether he’s playing or someone mentions his name, Kansas is that team.

And they do have that dynamo. He wears No. 1 and answers to two nicknames: Speedy Gonzalez and the Streakin’ Puerto Rican.

Junior LaQuvionte Gonzalez, a transfer wide receiver from Texas A & M, is listed at 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds, not big numbers for a Big 12 football player. He has shown he’s fearless enough to take hits over the middle and return punts, which isn’t to say he’s not afraid of anything.

That would not be an accurate statement, according to the Lawrence man who knows him best. Kansas head coach David Beaty was his position coach at A & M and Gonzalez followed him to Kansas.

“Y’all, he literally is like my son,” said Beaty, a father to two daughters. “I mean, he comes to the house. He hangs out with my girls. When it’s thunder and lightning outside he comes to our house because he’s scared of lightning. He’s a trip.”

Maybe that’s because lightning is the one thing Gonzalez can’t outrun.

“Probably told y’all too much there,” Beaty said at his media day press conference. “Can we strike that from the record?”

No.

“He’s just a great kid,” Beaty said. “I love him to death. I love his playful spirit.”

As with any relationship that has father-son undertones, a generation gap is bound to creep into the equation.

“He has this deal about him that he can’t just text you and ask the question,” Beaty said. “The first text is going to be A-Y-E, ‘Aye, coach.’ ‘Yes, Quiv.’ So he can’t just ask the question. So we’re working through that communication part. ‘Quiv, do you think you can just go ahead and send one text instead of two?’ “

The head coach, also serving as offensive coordinator this season, has a pair of thoughts forever playing ping pong in his brain regarding Gonzalez: 1. Find as many ways as possible to use his speed. 2. Try not to overuse him. The more successful the first challenge, the more difficult the second becomes.

When asked where he will turn for return men, the first name Beaty uttered was the same for both punts and kickoffs.

“Quiv will answer a lot of questions for us in that punt return game,” Beaty said. “Man, I’m excited to see what he can do for us back there.”

And: “Quiv on kickoff return. … He’s got some juice back there. There’s no doubt about it.”

These responses came not long after Beaty said, “Here is the deal with Quiv: We can’t put too much on Quiv. He’s not the answer to all the ills that we have. He is just a piece of it. He can’t do too much. We had a kid at Rice named Sam McGuffie, came from Michigan. Sam was a tremendous player, very much like Quiv. The thing we did, we put too much on Sam that year. We learned a hard lesson and he was not as productive as he could have been.”

Beaty is even mindful of trying to keep Gonzalez fresh during practices. Trying and failing, for the most part.

“Man, that guy loves to practice,” Beaty said. “He is like a kid getting out of the car at an amusement park when he gets there. The first day, so fun to watch him. I mean, I’m talking to him about noon. We’re going to lunch. I’m like, ‘Hey, Bud, we’re going to have about a two-and-a-half-hour practice tonight. You know that, right? I don’t want you dead by the time we get through routes.’ ‘Coach, I got it. I got it.’ “

And?

“He is spent by the time we get halfway through practice because he’s so ramped up,” Beaty said. “He’s got so much energy. He’s learning because he hasn’t been on the field and able to play for a while.”

Spending a year without playing in a game fueled the speedy receiver’s hunger to play.

“I feel like football is life,” Gonzalez said. “Hard times at home, high school, growing up as a kid, football just brought me through it all.”

And ultimately brought him from College Station, where he wanted to play more, to Lawrence, where the coach will try not to play him too much for the good of the player and the team.