10:48 a.m. Update:

It looks like the timeline for the the KU coaching hire has moved up drastically and, according to multiple sources, an announcement could come as soon as this afternoon.

It looks as if Texas A&M recruiting coordinator and wide receivers coach David Beaty has emerged as the clear leader for the job and may be named the 38th coach in KU history as soon as this afternoon.

According to a source, the KU assistant coaches were asked to leave the football complex today because someone of some importance was coming through later. According to online flight tracking, there is a plane en route to Lawrence from College Station, Texas.

Beaty was believed to be a strong candidate throughout the process, with his recruiting ties in Texas and past experience at KU giving him two important qualities for the job based on what KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger outlined as key factors before the search fully began.

Beaty, 43, worked on the staff of Mark Mangino at Kansas from 2008-09 and for one year under Turner Gill in 2011.

According to USA Today, he made $359,500 at A&M in 2013. He is expected to make at least twice as much as that plus incentives at KU.

Stay tuned for more updates as this story develops.

Original post, 9:39 a.m.:

It’s Friday, and we’ve now had a full week of coaching search speculation and banter while Kansas University athletic director Sheahon Zenger has had a full week to conduct phone interviews and narrow down his list of candidates to replace Charlie Weis.

From what I’ve been able to gather, it sounds like this thing is close to wrapping up but that does not necessarily mean there’s a clear No. 1 or No. 2 choice, just that they’ve done a fair amount of narrowing down candidates and are in position to conduct final interviews and use those to make their decision.

I think it’s safe to say that between 7-12 coaches (perhaps one or two more) went through phone interviews with Zenger and members of the search committee this week — a couple are probably still doing that today — and I’m guessing that four or five of those will get an in-person interview, which could begin as soon as Sunday night but most likely will take place Monday and Tuesday.

There appears to be the sense that this thing could wrap up even before next Friday, but that, of course, depends upon how the in-person interviews go and assumes that no other new candidates join the party. It’s hard to know whether that will happen, but it certainly could. As I was told from the beginning, the search committee would not be opposed to 11th-hour interest, provided it came from the right candidate.

It seems Clint Bowen, David Beaty, Tim Beck and Ed Warinner will get interviews. That has been reflected in the percentage wheel throughout this process. I still think there could be another serious contender or two involved here, but I’ve had a hard time pinpointing who that might be. If that’s the case, it’s most likely a sitting head coach, but my money would be on it being a name we might not have heard much, if at all, during the past week. In short, I don’t think it’s Willie Fritz, Bo Pelini, Jerry Kill or any of those other names you’ve all heard throughout this process.

I’m still working the phones to try to see if any of my sources have heard any other names pop up, so stay tuned throughout the day for updates, if available.

While we wait, let’s look at a few of the factors that I think will be crucial during the interview process and probably already were during the round of phone interviews. Generally speaking, the second interview becomes an extended version of what already took place over the phone. I heard the phone interviews were around an hour, but you can bet the in-person interviews will be three times that long, if not longer.

• One thing I think the committee will really want to hear is who each candidate believes it can bring in as part of its coaching staff. This, obviously, is not a guarantee, but it’s pretty common for guys who have head coaching aspirations to have an idea of who they’d like to have on their staff and many of them have even had conversations with these guys in the past. Something like, ‘Hey, if I were to get this job or that job would you come with me as my OC?’ They don’t have to have signed contracts at the ready during the interviews, but I think one of the advantages of having a committee here is that you get several different opinions and reads on how confident a candidate is in the staff he could put together based on how he tells you who it might be.

• Another huge aspect is each coach’s recruiting plan. This goes beyond just saying, “We’d hit Texas pretty hard” and stuff like that, and includes information on the types of kids and players they’d go after along with the crucial territories and any plans for how to make recruiting Kansas a priority and how to handle walk-ons.

• The committee also is going to want to hear about general football philosophies. For example, if a guy comes in and talks about running a pro style offense, he probably won’t be seen in the most favorable light. But this step goes beyond just talking about offensive and defensive schemes. The committee also will want to hear how each candidate plans and expects to compete as a heavy underdog in a tough conference and how they would plan to narrow the gap between KU and the rest of the Big 12.

• Another important element of the interview could be to provide a detailed plan for how practices would be run. Again, the candidates probably won’t have to go as far as drawing up a complete daily practice schedule — though that probably wouldn’t hurt and a couple of guys probably will — but the committee surely will want to hear how practices will be run, what the tone of practices will be like and those on the committee familiar with how things ran under Turner Gill and Weis surely will compare what they hear in interviews to what they saw during the past four or five seasons. Clearly, what’s been done in the recent past hasn’t worked.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the interviews will be very important because they’ll allow the committee to get a real, live feel for the confidence, comfort-level and charisma of each candidate. But I don’t think this is a deal where a guy can win the job simply by hitting a home run in the interview.

If this committee has done its job, which it seems is the case, then its members have talked to all kinds of people about each one of the candidates and done extensive background checks on each of them, involving everything from football to family to philosophy.

I think that may be why this search has gone at the pace that it has. After back-to-back swings and misses with the past two head coaches, they cannot take anything for granted this time around. And that has way more to do with the overall good of the program and the university than it does just for Zenger and his future.

Having said all of that, my latest percentage wheel has not changed much at all from yesterday morning. I know people expect Warinner to move up on my list, but, even with him coming in for an interview, I’m leaving him where he’s been all along for now based on what I’ve been hearing.

If there’s an 11th-hour candidate, that will certainly change things, but, as of now, it seems like Bowen and Beaty are the front-runners and pretty close at the top. It could come down to the interviews and whether Beaty gets an offer. If he does, I think he takes it. If not, I think it’s Bowen.

Here’s a look:

1. Clint Bowen 34%
1. David Beaty 34%
3. Other 22%
4. Ed Warinner 5%

5. Tim Beck 5%

Stay logged on to KUsports.com throughout the day for any news or updates that may come our way…