Back in 2011, Kansas thought they had made a splash in the college football world by hiring former New England Patriots offensive coordinator and Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis to lead their program.
This was a slam dunk at the time - after all, Weis was still one of the biggest names in the sport - and he was expected to turn Kansas into a respectable program. However, if the Jayhawks had failed to get Weis, they would've offered the job to current Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn, who was the offensive coordinator for the Tigers in 2011.
We know how this turned out - Weis has already been fired, while Malzahn led Auburn to an SEC Championship in his first season as the head coach.
It's hard to say that Malzahn would've had similar success in Kansas as he's had at Auburn, but he did have a conference championship season as the head coach at Arkansas State before he went back to be the head man for the Tigers. There's no doubt that he would've injected new life into the struggling Jayhawk program, and probably racked up some upsets in the Big 12.
Auburn would've fired Gene Chizik no matter what, who they let go after their 3-9 campaign in 2012 - the year after Malzahn left to coach Arkansas State. Malzahn still would've been a leading candidate for the job, so that probably wouldn't have changed.
As for Charlie Weis, what would he have done without the Kansas job? Would he have sat around (while getting paid by Notre Dame) and waited for a more desirable college coaching job to open up, or would he have gone back to the NFL? Would he have been able to rebuild his reputation?
Who knows, maybe Auburn would've been interested in Weis, or maybe he would've taken over at Kentucky or even Tennessee a year later. Or maybe he would've taken over at Texas A&M instead of Kevin Sumlin, and Johnny Manziel would still be just another guy.
No one really knows what would've happened, but it's fun to contemplate what an alternate universe would be like.
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