Two difficult game-day juggling acts, one a new one, another a holdover from the Charlie Weis staff with a new wrinkle, will go into effect Saturday in Morgantown, West Virginia.

John Reagan wears the headphones of an offensive coordinator and offensive line coach. That’s an unusual combination since the OC more often coaches either quarterbacks, running backs or wide receivers, in that order. Reagan worked for Weis on the sidelines. Most offensive coordinators prefer the view from the press box. Reagan will return to the booth under Bowen’s leadership.

Bowen will continue as defensive coordinator/linebackers coach and handle head-coaching duties.

Bowen was asked Monday morning on the Big 12 conference call about whether he will put some of his DC duties on assistants.

“That’s a great question,” Bowen said, “something I gave a lot of thought to last night. You’re right in my mind with that question. How do you handle those additional responsibilities.”

A great question elicited a great response.

“Where I’m at right now, I feel like I have the best grasp on this defense and how it adjusts when we need to make adjustments and where we need to go next when teams are doing certain things,” Bowen said. “I feel at this point in time, I need to continue to control the defense.”

Which means the additional game duties that assistants will help him with are the ones new to Bowen.

“We kind of started some plans on how I’m going to get other people to assist on game day for game management, clock management, down-and-distance situations, where someone is really in my ear controlling that the whole time so that they’ve constantly got the operation, the next step planned where we want to go with it, a contingency plan, so that when I’m busy with other things, they have all the information I need right at the flash of a second,” Bowen said.

Former KU center Ryan Cantrell, who worked under Reagan at Rice, holds the title “assistant director of operations.” He will continue to serve as an extra set of eyes and ears for Reagan on game day with the offensive line.