A week removed from one of the more tumultuous stretches in Kansas Athletics history — ultimately shelling out $3.37 million to part ways with both football coach Les Miles and athletics director Jeff Long in a matter of days — little information has emerged publicly on the future of the athletics department at the University of Kansas.
KU Chancellor Douglas Girod, in announcing Long’s resignation on March 10, said the university would immediately start the process of finding a new director for the athletics department, and that he would lead the process with assistance from a search firm and four alumni advisors.
Considering that the athletics director will be tasked with hiring a permanent football coach, Girod acknowledged in his March 10 message that time is of the essence in hiring Long’s replacement, and said he hoped to have a new director named “within the next few weeks”.
But if Girod and KU are indeed using a search firm to hire the university’s next athletics director, that firm is not under any formal contract with Kansas’ flagship university.
The Lawrence Times on Tuesday filed a Kansas Open Records Act request for any contractual agreements between the university and search firms tasked with hiring either an athletics director or a head football coach.
Late Wednesday night, the university said no such records existed.
The Times reached out to three university officials seeking clarification on why there are no formalized agreements with outside search firms and whether Girod still hoped to have an athletics director hired in the next few weeks, but received no response Thursday.
