photo by: Richard Gwin

Kansas athletic director Sheahon Zenger and former KU quarterback John Hadl watch during the first day of spring football practices on Tuesday, March 27, 2012.

photo by: Richard Gwin

Kansas athletic director Sheahon Zenger and former KU quarterback John Hadl watch during the first day of spring football practices on Tuesday, March 27, 2012.

Talk to a dozen people and you’ll get a dozen different opinions on which direction the Kansas University football program should go with its coaching hire.

Check that, you’ll probably get about two or three times that many because not only could you get a different name from each person, but you also could get a different list of what factors and elements should be most important.

Welcome to Sheahon Zenger’s world.

For some folks it’s the idea of recruiting Texas that means the most. These people like, maybe even love, Texas A&M recruiting coordinator and receivers coach David Beaty. And why not? The guy can walk into just about any high school in Texas and bust out a secret handshake or hug with one of the football coaches and, from there, he’s got a automatic chance with the players he’s going after.

Don’t think that’s important? Think again. That kind of relationship, which current KU receivers coach Eric Kiesau developed with Nigel King’s high school coach, was the deciding factor in why King chose Kansas. King trusted his coach. His coach trusted Kiesau. And the Maryland receiver picked the Jayhawks and never looked back. That’s worked out pretty well for both parties, don’t you think?

For other people, recruiting Kansas and/or Oklahoma is just as important as Texas. And I don’t disagree with that. You’ll always want to get as many players out of the Lone Star State as you can, but, at Kansas, you’re never going to get the best Texas has to offer. Ever. In Kansas and Oklahoma, your chances go up to get the cream of the crop from those states and you don’t have to look that far back to see proof of that. James Holt, Chris Harris and Jake Laptad all came from Oklahoma. Jake Sharp, Kerry Meier, Mike Rivera, Darrell Stuckey and Ben Heeney all came from Kansas. Both states are important. So there’s no need for this to be an all-Texas-all-the-time endeavor.

Whether you favor Beaty, Clint Bowen, Tim Beck or Willie Fritz or think that recruiting, player development or sincere connections with big-money donors are the most important jobs of a head coach, this thing is probably going to come down to four or five names that have a real shot at becoming KU’s next coach.

I could sit here and draw up a list of 20 guys who have been talked about, considered, contacted or crossed off the list, but that would be a waste of time because many of those guys, although intriguing for one reason or another, were never really in the running.

See, searches like this often travel down two paths. The first and most obvious path is the road to finding the right guy. It’s the most important thing on the plates of Zenger and the search committee and you can bet that 12-15 hours a day — phone calls, research, investigations, etc. — from any number of people involved are being spent on trying to pinpoint Mr. Right.

The other path is completely different and, although it does not end up in the home or office of the right guy, it often leads to that person. That’s where a lot of those 20 or so names come into play and many of them came into play during the last search, as well. Remember when it was rumored that Zenger had met with former Wisconsin head coach Barry Alvarez during the search of 2011? It wasn’t to see if he was interested in the job. It was instead to see what he thought about the KU program, what others had told him about Kansas and the Big 12 and an inquiry into what factors should be important. And before you go thinking that Alvarez’s answers shaped Zenger’s opinion, remember that this was just one example of a meeting like that and, therefore, it only had some impact into how Zenger proceeded.

Such conversations are crucial when you’re trying to find a coach because Zenger has a much greater responsibility in this whole deal than just to pick the guy he likes. That’s especially true this time around after Charlie Weis was shown the door. Zenger has to like the guy in order for him to have a chance, but, believe it or not, this time around it’s just as important for others to like him to — committee members, current and former players, athletic department officials and donors alike.

The only way that Kansas is going to successfully rebuild its football program is by finding a leader that can take all of these elements and personalities into account and make all of them work and come together. The project is too daunting for one man — coach or AD — to do it alone. And the road is too rocky and fraught with pitfalls for anyone to expect that.

photo by: Nick Krug

Shortly after 6:30 a.m., Kansas interim head football coach Clint Bowen walks toward his office down a hallway lined with rows of images documenting the high points from the program's recent history, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014.

I think that’s why Bowen seems to be the odds-on favorite right now. He’s working with the advantage of being able to show concrete evidence of how successful he can be in some of these key areas. The players love him. The alumni is all-in. The product on the field has improved, Oklahoma and Baylor notwithstanding, and Zenger likes him. He would not have given him this chance if that weren’t the case.

So, in Bowen, you’ve got a known commodity, a guy who plenty of people would support and a guy who, no question about it, would give his heart and soul to the program. Heck, he already has.

What the next two weeks or so are about is stacking candidates up against what you know you have in Bowen.

How does Candidate A compare to Bowen in recruiting philosophy and production? How does Candidate B compare to Bowen in player development? How does Candidate C compare to Bowen in ability to connect to people, donors, players and fans alike?

Such a scenario is rare in college coaching because, more often than not, the interim guy is not actually a candidate for the job, more just a guy who can land the ship before leaving town with the rest of the staff.

And because of that, coaching searches often produce a final pool of guys who have to be compared to one another in a guessing-game situation. If a school narrows its choice down to three guys, it has to pick the best of the bunch based on what it thinks it knows — and likes — about each guy. In KU’s case currently, it can stack the strengths and weaknesses of the other finalists against what it absolutely does know about Bowen.

While that figures to be a good thing for Bowen, given the way his time as interim coach went and was received, it’s an even better thing for Zenger and Kansas because it increases the odds that they’ll get this one right.