Kansas Needs Phillip Fulmer

Ever since he was hired at Kansas in 2002, Mark Mangino has made Kansas football relevant. Before 2002, all Kansas fans cared about was college basketball and college basketball recruiting. Mangino is a great offensive mind that helped lead Oklahoma to a national championship in 2000 as their offensive coordinator. The ironic part is that now that the Jayhawks are a consistent top-25 team, fans have higher expectations. Those expectations are causing Mangino to have one of the hottest seats in all of college football.

Former Jayhawks players said on Thursday that Mangino would say inappropriate things to them like mocking a player’s brother getting shot and saying insensitive comments about a player’s alcoholic father. Senior linebacker Arist Wright complained to athletic director Lew Perkins that Mangino chewed him out and poked him in the chest. The university is investigating these allegations and it looks like Mangino has lost control of this program, even though he said he did nothing wrong. Mangino deserves some immunity since he led the Jayhawks to a 12-1 record and an Orange Bowl victory over Virginia Tech. The problem is that if these allegations are true, Mangino deserves to lose his job. Where should the Jayhawks turn? There is another fairly large coach that just happens to be looking for a job.

Former Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer is ready to get into coaching again next season and he said recently on The Tony Barnhardt Show on CBS College Sports Network that he has 10,12 good years left of being an active coach. Fulmer said, “If the opportunity, the right opportunity, presents itself, I’m certainly going to look at it.”

Fulmer also mentioned in the past that he wants a chance to compete for a championship and with some strong recruiting classes, Fulmer could consistently win the Big 12 North. Fulmer has history recruiting all over the country and he could use his connections from the South to form some strong recruiting classes at Kansas. One other reason that Fulmer would be a great fit at Kansas is the fact that Fulmer was always close with his players. You never heard anything about Fulmer beating his players or mocking their family problems. Fulmer always preached that Tennessee was a family and that he wanted to please his players’ parents. If Kansas wants a coach that treats his players better than Mangino allegedly does, Fulmer would be a great fit for the Jayhawks.