What If? Changing Kansas Football Outcomes: 63 Days

A staple of college football summers is a look back on years past, wondering if things could have been wildly different if the outcome of just one play or game was changed. With so many moving pieces on any individual team and in the sport as a whole, college football is no exception. And the Kansas Jayhawks have several pivotal moments across the last few decades that we could talk about.

Yesterday, friend-of-the-site Mike Vernon posed the following question on Twitter (he may not be the only one, but his was the first I saw and the most prominent):

If you could change the outcome of one KU football game what would it be and why?

Mine might be KU-Colorado, 2009.
— Mike Vernon (@M_Vernon) June 29, 2023

The replies to that tweet are very interesting, and give a wealth of options to pick from. Friend and former colleague Mike Plank laid out TWELVE options for what game would have the biggest impact. I agree with his rankings for the most part, although I might quibble a bit about how much different things really would have been if Kansas had beaten Missouri and lost to Oklahoma. A #1 ranking for a week would have been nice to talk about, but there is a very realistic chance Kansas loses to Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game, goes to the Orange Bowl still and beats the same Virginia Tech team. The only differences would be the trivia question about the highest ranking ever achieved and not having to listen to Missouri fans whine incessantly about how the Orange Bowl was stolen from them that year.

And with the ability to only change one outcome, how much could the reputation of the program really be changed? If Kansas gets to the Big 12 title game and finishes 13-1 instead of 12-1, does that do anything to change the perception of the decade-plus of abysmal performances?

If we take the David Beaty win over Texas away, or give Mark Mangino another year thanks to beating Colorado to make a bowl game in the 2009-10 season, does the resulting fall out change enough about those programs to make recruits think differently, or athletic directors to make different hiring decisions? Not likely. So if we only can change one game outcome, it's probably not enough to counteract the decade of incompetence at the Athletic Director position and the debacles that were their coaching hires.

But what if we didn't limit ourselves to the outcome in terms of score? After all, sometimes the most important things that happen in a game have absolutely nothing to do with the scoreboard, especially when looking ahead.

If Daniel Hishaw hadn't suffered a season-ending injury against Iowa State last year, would the Jayhawks have had more firepower down the stretch of the season?

If Jason Bean and Kendrick Miles don't get injured against Kansas State in 2021, Jalon Daniels would have redshirt that season. Would we have seen Daniels at all last season? That's definitely not a GOOD change to make, but it is a good example of what I'm talking about.

But the biggest injury that changed the trajectory of a season was when Jalon Daniels went down against the TCU Horned Frogs this past season. With the exception of an off-day against Iowa State when nothing could get going offensively, Daniels was putting together what seemed to be a Heisman contender-caliber season.

While there is no guarantee that Daniels would have been able to perform better than Jason Bean in the second half of the TCU game through the Texas Tech game, it's hard to imagine he would have been worse. His performance in the Liberty Bowl should instill the confidence that the Jayhawks would have at least qualified for the same bowl.

But there was a realistic shot that without the injury, the hiccups against Texas and Kansas State either aren't there at all or just less severe. Add in a possible completed comeback against Oklahoma or Baylor, plus an opportunity to be more of the aggressor in the 4th quarter down in Lubbock, and the ceiling would have been much higher.

I don't write this to discount what Jason Bean did for this team last year. No matter how grateful I am for getting Kansas over the hump of bowl-eligibility, I can't deny that a healthy Daniels had a chance to be a Heisman finalist. Combine that with another two or three regular season wins, and I'm willing to bet that the feeling around this team would be significantly different this year.

Of course, this entire point will be moot when he does that this year instead.

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