photo by: Richard Gwin

Kansas men's basketball coach Bill Self and KU football coach Charlie Weis get together for a radio talk show Monday, July 30, 2012, at the Oread Hotel.

Saturday’s match-up between 1-0 Kansas and 2-0 Duke no doubt would grab much more attention if it were played in Allen Fieldhouse or Cameroon Indoor Stadium instead of outside on the turf at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, North Carolina.

Let’s face it: Duke and Kansas are both basketball schools and there’s not a person on the planet who doesn’t think that.

That includes KU football coach Charlie Weis, who, on Tuesday, talked about the challenges — and advantages — of coaching the football team, which, in many opinions and at most schools is the king of college athletics, at a school where basketball rules.

“I don’t know what (Duke coach) David
(Cutcliffe) thinks,” Weis said. “He’s
got Coach K and I’ve got Bill Self.
Does it get any better than that? I
mean, you’re talking about arguably
the two best, two of the best coaches
in America. So from my standpoint, I
hope basketball wins every game every
year regardless of how we do. I
appreciate the support I get from
Coach Self and our basketball team,
but most importantly, I can utilize
their success to help use that as
something to shoot for and definitely
use as a recruiting tool.

Weis continued….

“You can do one of two things: You can
feel like a second?class citizen or
you can play into it, and I totally
play into it. Totally. I don’t look at
it like that at all. I’m more than
content with our basketball team
competing for a national championship
every year. I just want to get our
team to where we’re winning more than
we’re losing on an annual basis.
That’s what I want to do. I want to be
winning more than we’re losing on an
annual basis. When we get to that
point, you can ship me out of here. I
don’t want to do it once. I want to
make sure we’ve got that set. Once we
get that set, you can pack me up and
send me out if that’s what you want to
do.”

That last part was said with no bitterness or poor-me mentality. It merely was Weis re-emphasizing what he came to Kansas to accomplish, which was to get the KU football program to the point where it’s considered a perennial winner.

The general rule of thumb used to be that new coaches would — or at least should — get five years to make that happen. Weis’ contract with Kansas was for five years. And although he just started Year 3, he pointed to Cutcliffe’s path at Duke as proof positive that, if given time, such a transformation is possible — even at a basketball school like Duke or Kansas.

“I know that Years 3 and 4 they won
three games,” Weis said of Cutcliffe
at Duke. “So was he lighting the world
on fire at that time? I mean, what he
did was he put in a plan, he
recruited, recruited, recruited, got
guys he can get into Duke, which is
not the easiest thing to do, OK, stuck
to the plan, had support from the
administration, OK, didn’t waver. When
people were saying, well, where is
this heading, and all of a sudden Year
6 they go and win 10. That’s the way
it happens a lot of times when you
walk into a program that just hasn’t
done too well recently. I have a lot
of respect for the job they’ve done,
and hopefully we cannot only emulate
that, but hopefully we can speed up
that timetable just a tad.”

KU and Duke will square off, in football, at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Duke’s home stadium.