Les Miles, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Three weeks after Kansas scored 48 points in a historic road win against Boston College, offensive coordinator Les Koenning has been fired.
First-year coach Les Miles on Sunday announced Koenning’s dismissal, a day after the Jayhawks’ 45-20 home loss to Oklahoma. Brent Dearmon, who had served as a senior offensive analyst for KU, has been promoted to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Best part of this story is the least surprising part: “Kansas owes Koenning a total of $1 million for the remainder of this season and next season.”
It’s not so much firing now that makes me chuckle — the idea that a mid-season firing of an offensive coordinator is going to light a fire under Kansas is ludicrous, of course — as it is the decision to hire a guy you’re willing to jettison after six games in the first place. Then again, I’m not the management genius that Jeff Long obviously is.
Get The Picture 
They have money to spare now that they’re finally not paying for Charlie Weis, right?
But seriously, it does beg the question that if Les pushed to hire LK as his OC, then shouldn’t he bear some of that responsibility?
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People out here were really excited by the Les Miles hire. I was amazed by their amazement.
You know, Mark Mangino was a hugely fat arsehole, but that guy had Kansas in the top 10 that one year. Seems like a century ago now.
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On top of it being just year one of the Les Miles era at Kansas, it seems pretty odd to fire the guy after a game that no one expected them to win anyway. Kansas’ offense was only averaging 22.8 ppg anyway (no idea if any of those points were from defense or special teams). If you toss out the outlier against BC though, it drops their average to 17.8 ppg. So not great either way you slice it.
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Their leading rusher decided to the D’Eriq King thing, too, which didn’t help.
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Did they get Snoop to perform at the presser? I guess Long watched Mc Jughead flail about in the aftermath of the Ludacris fiasco and decided the takeaway was “we need to go bigger.”
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They could have at least gotten the pole dancers…just to keep it family-friendly mind you.
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Nah, that’s just for recruiting now.
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Not defending this because none of us know, but it may not be a termination because his offense wasn’t working; he could have been a disruptive force on the staff, he may have been insubordinate to Miles, he may have another issue from his past, or current problem etc., etc. I would say that Kansas averaging 22+ points may not be great, but given the talent level and a new system, it sounds like more than a “fired for performance” situation.
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Guess we should look for it under “due diligence” reporting to the NCAA. Could have been tier 1 error.
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Several of the UT fans sitting around me at Neyland were talking up the “rumor” that they were going to ditch Pruitt and hire Miles away from KU.
All I could think about was between the buyouts of the current staff, the money they are still shelling out to the last staff and Les’ buyout clause at KU, that may break then.
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