Notebook: Weis talks recruiting

After Kansas gets done with Saturday's game against West Virginia, the coaches will immediately hit the road recruiting. Kansas coach Charlie Weis said on Tuesday that the coaches will be away from Lawrence recruiting for two weeks until they have to be off the road on December 15th.

It's not just the assistant coaches either that will be traveling across the country, Weis plans to squeeze in as many in home visits as he can through the first half of December.

"Most of those head coaches don't like this recruiting stuff," Weis said. "You know, I don't like being away from home and all that that other stuff, but I do think that recruiting is a lifeline. I think that's what the one thing that they should expect from me, that I'm going to have to just be a grinder and that's what I intend to do."

Weis is hoping the lure of early playing time for recruits will help offset the disadvantages of coming off a poor season.

"The best year I ever had recruiting in the past was after the worst season, because more guys see an opportunity to play earlier. They all want to play. Yeah, they all want to play."

No Extra Practices

While the coaches are on the road recruiting, players will likely have begin off season conditioning with Scott Holsopple before the semester ends in several weeks. It will be the fourth straight December that Kansas won't be preparing for a bowl game.

Weis talked about how valuable the 15 extra practices are to the younger players for development. The four players who Weis thought would gain the most from an extra several weeks of practice were redshirts Courtney Arnick, Tyler Holmes, Tevin Shaw and Greg Allen.

"There is four freshmen just on the defensive side of the ball who every day give a full day's work on the show team," Weis said. "And then all of a sudden, now you are repping them with our stuff to get them that much closer to get ready to go rather than them just reading off a card and playing on show team."

Welcome to the Big 12

As has been the usual gameplan all year, Weis and the KU offense will try to slow the game down against West Virginia this Saturday and to try to keep the Mountaineers offense off the field as long as possible.

After now having a full season to see every type of Big 12 offense, on Tuesday Weis gave his evaluation of the league.

"You want to talk about a contrasting styles, to go from the SEC to the Big 12 in one year," Weis said. "You went from all games being slug it out games in the teens to games being 50 to 49. They are two totally different styles. I think that these teams would give anyone problems, as far as scoring points. I haven't like it as a head coach, but I'm sure the defensive coaches like it even less. And there are a lot of good players."