Going to school at Nebraska was always something that meant a lot to my parents. They loved the culture, loved the school and loved the players that represented their school on the field. Especially Turner Gill. Turner was a player that led his team and was fun to watch. After college he coached at a variety of different places before coming back home to Nebraska as an assistant coach. After Nebraska he bounced around from the Green Bay Packers to Buffalo University and finally landed himself in Lawrence as the head football coach. Even though we weren’t the biggest KU fans, my parents were ecstatic to have one of their college heroes in town again.
As I was growing up and hoping to make it big as a college football player my parents always told me that they wanted me to play for Turner Gill. They never did have one bad thing to say about the man and were dead set on seeing me have him as a mentor if at all possible.
So naturally, for years as he tried to revive a sorry Buffalo football program, we hoped for the best for him. When in 2010 when he was hired to replace big man Mangino in wake of a scandal between Mangino and former players, we all couldn’t have been happier.
Now don’t get me wrong: I have never been a Jayhawk fan at all. Growing up a Nebraska fan in Kansas City was not fun. It was something I powered and struggled through. But when Gill was hired I began to quietly cheer for the KU football team and even more so for Turner Gill.
Two years later, he is 5-18 as a head coach at KU and his head is on the chopping block. Now KU had a great season in 2007 and that can never be taken away from them, but I don’t believe they deserve to be this picky about their coach. Two years of mediocre football should not mean the coach needs to be fired; that would be true at any D1 college or university no matter what the tradition may be.
Gill inherited a tough situation from Mangino, who in the year before led this “elite” team to a .500 season and topped it off by being accused of verbal and physical abuse by several past players. It wasn’t exactly an easy situation to come into. But regardless of the situation Gill came into, I understand that the university pays him to coach and lead his team through adversity so he should be expected to do just that. However, so far KU fans have been less than thrilled with the job he has done.
This season, the Jayhawks may only have two wins and many of their losses may have been pretty embarrassing, but we shouldn’t give up on Turner Gill just yet. He has so many freshman and sophomores playing big roles on his team. Over half of the players on the KU depth chart from the beginning of the season are underclassmen. This list included the top two players at each position. Would Les Miles and LSU be undefeated with that many underclassmen in starting roles? Probably not. The point is it is hard to win when you have had less time to coach your players. If KU fans can just give him a little more time to really coach and maybe just maybe he can turn this Kansas team around.
Now if he is unable to make those changes and they have another season similar to the last two then he deserves to get booted because by then he has had the time that he deserves. It is still college football, not charity. Gill does need to perform in order to keep his job but he needs to be given a chance to do that and three years is good enough of a chance for me.
So what I am saying Jayhawk fans is don’t look too closely into what happens today at Arrowhead. As much as a final loss to Missouri would sting, this guy deserves one more year no matter how bad the losses may have been. In college football today the coaches are being fired way too quick. Frank Solich was the head coach at Nebraska until he was fired in 2003. That season he had nine wins and was not even allowed to coach in the bowl game. Coaches deserve to prove themselves and they simply are not being given the chance to right now.
The “mighty” Hawks have never proved to be a big time football team, and don’t deserve to be so picky.
Even if I don’t end up playing big time football for Turner Gill like my parents hoped, I know it will be some consolation to them and to me to see our ole’ quarterback from Nebraska back on the sideline for one more shot next season at KU.
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