Letter to the editor: Give Beaty a chance

To the editor:

I don’t know whether or not David Beaty is the right person for the job as KU’s football coach, but I have to wonder why it has become Tom Keegan’s mission to get him canned.

In picking and choosing unfair statistics, Keegan’s zealotry makes it seem that he has a personal beef with Beaty rather than a professional one.

KU football reached perhaps its lowest depths after Mark Mangino was fired. Nobody is going to resurrect it overnight, or in three seasons for that matter. Keegan compares Beaty unfavorably to Mangino, specifically calling out Mangino’s 2007 Orange Bowl season and his KU career winning record. Let’s not forget that neither Mangino nor two-time Big 8 coach of the year Glen Mason had a winning season until their fourth.

Even though both of those successful coaches started their KU tenures when the football program was a mess, Beaty arguably started from a deeper hole, considering the proliferation of the modern winning programs. Surely the revolving door to the coach’s office isn’t the solution. Is Beaty the right person for the job? It’s too soon to know, even for Tom Keegan.