2010 Kansas Jayhawks

Since '05 Kansas has had 10, 9, 9, 13, and 11 White starters. This season Kansas is without Mark (I am the walrus) Mangino. New head coach Turner Gill (black) will be under the watchful CF eye as he leads the latest incarnation of the redleg jayhawkers. Some White backups you might see include RB Brandon Bourbon, C Alex Smith, RG Michael Martinovich</span></span>, and LT Riley Spencer.


Offense
QB Jordan Webb
FB Steven Foster
TE Tim Biere
LT Tanner Hawkinson</font>
LG Sal Capra
RG </font>Trevor Marrongelli</span></span></font>
RT Brad Thorson


Defense
DE Jake Laptad
SLB Drew Dudley
MLB Justin Springer</font>

Edited by: Colonel_Reb

Great work guys! I want to help this season and do a few teams. Can I ask how you guys compile this information? Do you go to each teams website and check every players bio to see if he's expected to start?

whiteathlete33 said:

Great work guys! I want to help this season and do a few teams. Can I ask how you guys compile this information? Do you go to each teams website and check every players bio to see if he's expected to start?

Click to expand...

It would be great to have some more help, whiteathlete33! The process is pretty easy.

I use www.cfn.scout.com as a basis for my previews, adding any other info I might have about a team. CFN has the projected 2 deep for each team, although they have just started posting previews this past week.

I also go to the team's website and find the team roster. By clicking on the names of each player listed on the depth chart, you can see if the player is White or not. Sometimes we have to go looking for pictures of players who we don't know, or who don't have a picture on the team site yet.

It also helps to do an "Advanced Search" for each team on the CF board. That way we can keep track of how many White starters a team has had over the past several years.

We started doing these FBS previews in '05 and made them comprehensive in '06. It was a lot more difficult to do them then, as team websites weren't as up to date or complete as they are now. Send me a PM if you have any specific questions. These previews are a fun thing to do for me, but I don't have the time to do them that I used to have. Any help from any CF poster would be greatly appreciated!

I just checked that site out Colonel. They have only a few teams done as of now which are the ones that you did.

For some teams, I'll also use their spring depth chart (if the they have one,) as a help with my predictions. I always read the previews, though, as injured players are usually not listed on the depth chart.

Also, True Frosh RB Brandon Bourban should see time this year as well.Edited by: Jack Lambert

Forgot about Brandon, Jack. Thanks for the reminder. Spring depth charts can definitely help in a lot of cases.

Here's a fascinating story that I found earlier today about the running back competition at KU. I noticed in another thread that WhiteRivals had Toben Opurum as a top-10 tailback for 2013, and he's not even LISTED on the depth chart for his college team this year! In an interesting twist, the WHITE GUY, Brandon Bourbon, is listed as the "speed" back. I attached the link above so that you can check out the comments as well. Here is the article in its entirety:


<H2 ="er">Jayhawks RB leader amystery</H2>
<DIV ="pre-story-tools">
By Tom Keegan
<DIV ="breadcrumbs">
<DIV ="">
<DIV id=story_ ="story_">


Most of the preseason football curiosity centers on which inexperienced quarterback will get the call to start the season, a competition Kale Pick likely will win.


Meanwhile, the race for featured running back receives not as much attention but offers more intrigue.
<DIV ="story_inline_ad ad">


The front-runner? If there is one, nobody's saying.


Power back Toben Opurum hasn't been listed on a depth chart, at least publicly, since Turner Gill replaced Mark Mangino as head coach. If that's not a bad sign for Opurum, at the very least it's not a good one.


Rell Lewis is sidelined because of a knee injury. Angus Quigley is back for a sixth season, but the more time that passes without him winning the job, the more reason exists to suspect whatever kept Mangino from using him makes Gill pause as well.


Red-shirt freshman Deshaun Sands, listed at 5-foot-7 and 190 pounds, has a shifty, determined running style. Consider him a candidate, but not the front-runner.


Don't discount the possibility of a true freshman leading Kansas in rushing this season. James Sims of Irving, Texas, and Brandon Bourbon of Potosi, Mo., arrived on campus with big reputations.


A 6-foot, 205-pound runner blessed with pretty good speed and the ability to make tacklers miss, Sims turned down scholarship offers from Arkansas and Purdue.


A 6-1, 208-pound speed back, Bourbon reneged on an oral commitment to Stanford to sign with KU after Gill and recruiting coordinator Reggie Mitchell were hired.


Asked to compare the true freshmen, Mitchell obliged.


"James is probably a little bit more elusive between the tackles,"Â￾ Mitchell said. "James has really good feet, whereas Brandon has straight-away speed. That's probably the biggest difference. One guy (Sims) is probably a little more shifty than the other."Â￾


Learning the nuances of pass protection and adjusting to the speed of the college game rank as the biggest adjustments for true-freshman running backs, Mitchell said, but in many ways it's an easier place to earn instant playing time than most positions.


"The running part, once they get started, you can tell right away, because that's all instinctive,"Â￾ Mitchell said. "I say, ‘Hey, your aim point's here,' and once the ball is in their hand, it's all on them."Â￾


Sophomore receiver Bradley McDougald compared the running styles of the two freshmen.


"They both have good speed,"Â￾ McDougald said. "They both run tough. Bourbon's a more physical runner, I would say. He likes to put his head down a little bit more, has a more aggressive stiff arm. Bourbon's faster. Sims has speed as well and is a physical runner, but he's more agile, a little shiftier."Â￾


The guess here â€" and it's just a guess â€" is that Sims has as good a shot as anybody to win the job. Bourbon's ceiling could be just as high.


"Bourbon kind of reminds me of Jake Sharp, a bigger Jake Sharp,"Â￾ McDougald said. "When he gets more comfortable in the offense and the system and with the speed of college football, I think he's going to be a great impact college player."Â￾

Of course Bourbon reminds McDougal of Jake Sharp! After all they do share one apparently overarching quality, being White. I don't know that I agree with Mitchell's assessment of running the ball being instinctive. At some point, they had to learn how to run it. I doubt they were born with a "ball running gene." It amazes me at how inarticulate coaches are these days. You can't make heads or tails of half of what they say.

Opuhum was moved to linebacker.

Alright Bourban will play this year.

lmao about rivals pre season rating on opurum, those guys are friggin geniuses

Yeah, and what a joke that somehow Opurum was NFLdraftscout's 12th best tailback for the 2013 draft the last time I checked. Jake Sharp- who started over Opurum for most of his senior season (despite being hurt) who was coming off a very nice year showing speed and upside- who would go on to probably test out better athletically than EVERY SINGLE BACK at the NFL combine- was ranked 38th by this website last draft. Yes, a slow 4.65 bruiser, who was Sharp's backup (and considered a FB by some) who ran for what, 4.2 YPC? and looks to not get much playing time the next year is an elite prospect and fellow more productive Jayhawk athletic freak- Jake Sharp- is a scrub! Sarcasm alert!

To be fair, I think I should clarify myself. I wasn't trying to indicate that Toben Opurum can't be a solid power back in the Big 12, just that a ranking of 12th best RB already for the 2013 draft is significantly higher than it should be. McGuffie, Burkhead and Wegher all performed very similar to T.O, but showed more upside and potential for big plays. Also, McGuffie and Wegher faced more adversity with injuries as freshman. Wegher also had his longest run of 70 yards called back on a bogus call. All three of the aforementioned white RBs have "much better" measurables than Opurum and IMO Burkhead could prove to be just as powerful as T.O, while Wegher is a shade behind Opurum in the power category. With McGuffie, power is his one and only weakness really- and it went along with staying healthy. If I were going to rank Opurum based on last season for the 2013 draft, I'd probably rank him somewhere in the low 30 range right now- and I think both Sims and Bourbon are more talented. I agree with Gill's assessment and even Quigley is probably more suited for Gill's offense with his skills and he's got seniority. Opurum could be groomed now while going into his second year to make a switch to a position that he could probably be even better than as a RB. I think we'll see both Bourbon and Sims as important parts of the offense if not this year than next!

With the season starting this week, I'll be posting some different updates for teams. This update is as of 8/19.

Sal Capra moved over to Center, and LG Duane Zlatnik will now start.

QB Kale Pick has won the starting job.

Drew Dudley starts at SLB position, but Huldon Tharp must've gotten injured; he wasn't on the depth chart.

Steven Foster won the FB job from Justin Puthoff.

Now we should have 11 white starters for the Jayhawks.

Thanks for the info, Jack. I just updated the original post. As of right now, there is 1 more half White or better team (34) than there were last year. As Sheriff Roscoe would say, good news, good news!

KU has been reduced to 10 starting whites for the GA Tech game this weekend. Sal Capra is moving over to LG, replacing Zlatnik, and Jeremiah Hatch (black sumo) will take over the duties at center. According to his bio, here are his hobbies: "Likes to rap, eat and spend time on the internet."

In other Kansas news, Jordan Webbwill start at QB for the Jayhawks, replacing Kale Pick. Also due to the utter ineffectiveness of the afflete RB corps, "Black" Angus Quigley (he really looked bad), and Deshaun Sands, coach Gill says that he will almost certainly use either Brandon Bourbon or James Sims (black) at some poing against GA Tech. Here's hoping that Bourbon gets a chance!

Well, that is bittersweet news FootballDad. I hate to see any White starters replaced, but like you I hope Brandon Bourbon gets a chance to shine.

I saw that Turner Gill's e-mail address was listed on a message board. I may send him an e-mail about that Jwall guy's channel (which features Nile Knapp), since Jwall is the only Youtuber with a Jake Sharp Pro Day video- and briefly mention that this kid would be an AMAZING addition to the Kansas struggling backfield. Gill seems like a pretty fair minded man- who wants equality and fair evaluations compared to blatant quotas- and will try to coach as much as he can that way without risking his job.

Gill is also not Kansas coach because of AA, he showed he was a talented coach at Buffalo- and I think he may end up running an Iowa or Nebraska type program at KU, which isn't perfectly fair, but still pretty good. He isn't perfect, but if he was any more fair, I think a few of his more Afrocentric black players may start calling him an "uncle Tom" and the whiterivals media- would turn on him- despite being black. I may actually delete this post in a couple days since I may send him the email. I will have to keep it short with a catchy headline, b/c I doubt he has time to read long e-mails.