Jayhawk Slant caught up with former Kansas wide receiver Quintin Smith who played at Kansas from 1986-1989. Smith would go on to play for the Chicago Bears in 1990. At Kansas, Smith was a first team All Big Eight selection in 1989 and finished his career at Kansas with 97 catches and 1,547 receiving yards and 9 receiving touchdowns.

After I was done with KU I spent time with the Chicago Bears, then went back to Kansas for grad school then spent the next six years in the NFL as a scout. I had five years with Kansas City and one with Minnesota. Then I went and played one year with the Chicago XFL team in Vince McMahon's old football league. Then from 2001 I have been into coaching. I coached Sterling high in Houston then Yates which is where I graduated from and this past year I have been coaching tight ends for a Division I AA school here at Texas Southern.

At that level everyone can play. It doesn't matter where you are from. I was signed as an undrafted free agent and made the team. That year the guys who were at my position was a first round pick was from LSU, second round from SMU and fourth round from Baylor. They didn't care where you were from as long as you could contribute. You had to find your niche and find your way on the team and contribute or you weren't going to be there very long.

Talk about your time scouting with the Kansas City Chiefs?

I was with them from 1995 to the 1999 draft. We did it a little bit different back then. We weren't apart of the National Scouting Service or Blesto Scouting Service. We had a list of names and we had to find the rest of the information. We didn't have verified information like height, weight, or speed on what they ran the 40 so we had to get that from different guys. We were working a little bit from behind but it was never an issue. I actually thought it was good because we didn't have a grade going in so you wouldn't think, 'Oh this guy is a first round pick,' then you look at him in the fall and if he didn't perform very well and wonder, 'Oh this guy is not very good. I wonder what happened' so you didn't have any preconceived notions walking in. So you just walk in and say, 'Okay let me see this guy,' and put your own grade on it instead of trying to match what was already there. Now everybody subscribes to those services. There might only be one or two teams that don't subscribe.

Spending more time at home with my family. When you are scouting you are driving 38,000 to 40,000 miles a year. You are gone about six months of the year.

Probably seeing kids come in at ninth grade and then develop as a player and also as a person even if they are put in a situation where they don't get a college scholarship. It's about getting an education and not making it to the NFL because that is a dream. There is only about around 2,000 jobs in the NFL as a player. You want those kids to get an opportunity to get a scholarship for a free education.

Just watching from where they were four years ago in the Orange Bowl to where they are now it is disappointing to see them fall so fast. It was tough to watch a team that could beat Nebraska, Oklahoma State and Colorado to a team that couldn't beat North Dakota State. It was disheartening. I made a comment from some of my former teammates at Kansas that we were 1-10 and I think we could beat those guys. I went to a game in 2010 where RG III didn't even have to throw a pass beyond 30 yards and he still had 500 total yards. It was that bad. Bringing in Charlie Weis was a surprise. I am not saying he is a bad coach because he has three Super Bowl rings. He didn't have the success that was anticipated for him at Notre Dame, and then Florida this last year only wins 6 games. Then again, the Chiefs have fallen off since he has left so maybe he had a lot to do with that. I think he is a good coach but the question is will he be a good college head coach.

I hope the similarities are there. I think if Weis has the same success that Mason had here in his 8-9 years then Kansas will be in a great place. If he doesn't then people will wonder why they brought in a coach who didn't have a lot of success at Notre Dame. It will be interesting to watch. The most important part is changing the perception of Kansas football around the country for the recruits. You can be the greatest coach in the world but if you don't have the right recruits then you can't win. You have to recruit the players that can compete with the rest of the schools in the Big 12.

When I was being recruited only three of the nine schools in the Southwest Conference weren't on probation. Only schools that weren't were Baylor, Rice, and Arkansas. I was worried about Texas and knew they were going to get rid of Fred Akers. I knew Texas A&M was about to go on probation, and I also visited Kansas. At the time they were running a spread with the quarterback behind center and I wanted to go to a school that threw the ball. I went to Kansas in February and the weather wasn't too bad so I wanted to go there. The coach that was recruiting me was Robert Ford, who was in the NFL for 15 years and ironically is now the wide receivers coach with me at Texas Southern University. He coaches receivers and I coach tight ends.

We ran the spread my freshmen year and then my sophomore year we hired a new offensive coordinator whose name was Gary Huff. He had come from the Raiders and was the former quarterback at Florida State. We ran more of a pro style offense that year. I remember we played Missouri on that last Saturday and all the coaches were fired by the next Monday.

Recruit better players. That's really it. Recruit better players. We just weren't very good. We just didn't have the players to compete at that time.

Valesente's plan was to recruit more locally around the state of Kansas and Missouri and we will try to compete with Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and the other Big 8 schools. Glenn Mason who was from Ohio came here and realized that a lot of the kids weren't good enough to compete just because the numbers weren't there from the state of Kansas to compete with everyone else. He went more to Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida to bring kids to Kansas and he was successful doing it. … He was also successful bringing in 1 to 3 kids from the state of Kansas that could play as well. It worked because in a few years they were competitive and no longer the laughing stock of the Big 8.

I talk with Willie Vaughn some recently. I have also talked with Kelly Donohoe. He wins all those state championships in Missouri and I tell him to bring his teams down to Texas and see what happens.