For Weis, Kansas-UH series is all about local recruiting

When University of Kansas football coach Charlie Weis first broached the idea of a football series with Hawaii, a Jayhawk administrator dismissed it with a smile.

"He thought I was kidding," Weis said Thursday.

Small wonder, perhaps, since the two schools are separated by nearly 4,000 miles and have met once in more than 100 years of football.

Adamantly, "I looked at him and said, ‘I’m not kidding!’" Weis said.

Weis, for all his joviality in other matters, does not kid around about the lifeblood of his program, recruiting, and be assured the newly announced home-and-home series with the Warriors is all about recruiting for the Jayhawks.

It is definitely not about hitting the beach or the golf course for Weis. How could it be when he says, "I’m the only guy who flies all the way to Hawaii and doesn’t even stay in a hotel."

Except for his 2008 Sheraton Hawaii Bowl appearance as Notre Dame’s head coach, Weis’ visits have been of the hit-and-run variety with more time spent in the air than on the ground. "One time I flew in from Chicago, landed in Honolulu at 2:30 p.m., saw a football game and went right to the airport to fly out," Weis said.

That was to recruit Manti Te’o to Notre Dame and Weis would have paddled the Alenuihh Channel, too, if necessary. Instead, he assigned a young assistant coach, Brian Polian, now the head coach of Nevada, the task of doing the 8,654-mile round trip a dozen times.

The visits opened their eyes to both the talent here — Scout.com ranked a dozen players three stars or higher in 2009 — and local family values, which Weis touts as being on the same page with his own.

Recruiting Te’o and Robby Toma to Notre Dame "made him a viable name here," Punahou football coach Kale Ane said.

Now, it is another young assistant, Jeff Blasko, who will get to accumulate the frequent-flier miles as the Jayhawks step up their courting of local players. They landed one, Saint Louis School linebacker Colton Goeas, in Weis’ first year and are clearly out to bag more.

"We’re looking at multiple guys," Weis said.

Which is why Weis prodded his administration to approach UH and do a deal for games in 2016 (in Lawrence) and ’17 (Aloha Stadium) that would give him something to sell in local living rooms to the 2014, ’15 and ’16 recruiting classes. The idea being that Lawrence might not look so far away if you get to come home and play a game and appear against the hometown team twice.

Not to be overlooked is that recruiting in Hawaii also means less likelihood of having to bump shoulder pads with perennial Big 12 powers Oklahoma and Texas in the same living rooms while trying to revive a downtrodden Jayhawk program.

"It is pretty simple," Weis says. "Do they want to stay locally or do they want to come to the mainland?"

For those with continental ambitions, "Let’s face it, wherever you go (on the mainland) it is a long flight," Weis said. "There are no short flights, right? Well, I felt once they got on a plane they might as well fly to Kansas City and end up in Lawrence."

Time will tell if prospective recruits think he was kidding.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.