If you want to know how David Beaty got his first coaching job at Kansas this is how the story goes.

Shortly after the 2007 season ended with an Orange Bowl win over Virginia Tech, Mark Mangino lost his wide receivers coach Tim Beck. Beck, a Youngstown, Ohio native was leaving to join his long-time friend Bo Pelini at Nebraska. Beck and Pelini grew up together in Youngstown.

Beck was hired in 2005 by Mangino as a successful and well-known high school coach from Mansfield Summit High in Texas. He had good recruiting ties to the Dallas area and helped Ed Warinner install the hurry-up, no huddle offense that Todd Reesing would run to near perfection before the 2007 season.

Mangino wanted to replace Beck with someone just like him. So he got the closest coach he could with a similar resume.

David Beaty was a high school coach at Irving MacArthur from 2002-2005 and built a good reputation in the Dallas area. In 2006 David Bailiff at Rice hired Beaty as his receivers coach. Two years later Beaty got a call from Mangino asking him to interview for the job at Kansas.

The story goes Mangino asked Beck what coach has Texas recruiting ties, knows the up-tempo offense, and can coach receivers. Beck immediately responded, “you need to call David Beaty.”

Fast forward to this weekend when the Jayhawks open the 2017 season against Southeast Missouri State. There will be a reunion for that Orange Bowl team and Mangino along with Aqib Talib and Anthony Collins will be inducted in the Hall of Fame.

There is a good chance if Mangino never makes that phone call to Beaty, he never becomes the head coach at Kansas. But he did.

“I think the biggest thing for me that I'll always take away from Coach Mangino is that there should never, ever be an ounce of complacency in you at all,” Beaty said. “There's always a new and better way out there, and research and see if it works for you, be courageous enough to do it if you believe in it, and also just make sure that you encourage/pressure your coaches to do it the same way.”

This weekend Beaty will have the chance to re-unite with his old boss and several former players from the 12-win season. There are lot of things Beaty learned from Mangino and some of that made him what he is today.

“He kept such a tight grip on us when it came to details that it made us all better,” Beaty said. “It made us all better. I mean, I am a much better coach today after working for him than I would have been without working for him. There's so many details that he taught me how to pay attention to that just made a difference in my career. It really did. And I'm nowhere near as good as most of the guys in the country, but I'm a lot better than I was as a result of working for him.”

It is difficult to guess how history would play out if circumstances were different. But there is a very strong chance that phone call from Mangino led to Beaty being the head coach at Kansas.