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For Kansas football and its latest coach, can Les be more?

Photo illustration by Nick Roy / theScore

Five college head coaches will take the field this fall with a national championship affixed to their legacies. Clemson's Dabo Swinney and Alabama's Nick Saban might alternate winning titles in perpetuity. Jimbo Fisher, now at Texas A&M, is six years removed from coaching one of the most dominant teams in recent memory at Florida State.

The other two coaches are back in the game after absences. One is Mack Brown, who returned to North Carolina after leading the school from 1988-97 before moving on to win a national championship at Texas. Brown, 68, spent five years away from the sideline.

Then there's the quirkiest pairing between a program and a coach this year: Kansas and the Mad Hatter.

Yes, Les Miles at Kansas will become reality this fall, beginning Saturday when he leads the Jayhawks into their season opener against FCS Indiana State. Both coach and program will be trying to relive their halcyon days from a little more than a decade ago.

But has too much time passed?

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Les Miles comes to Kansas 12 years removed from his lone national championship. Chris Graythen / Getty Images

Last month, Miles arrived in Arlington, Texas, for Big 12 media days with a flashy ring protruding from his right hand.

The ring was a relic from his past, and a compass for what he dreams is Kansas' future. Miles earned that jewelry 12 years ago as a reward for LSU's 38-24 win over Ohio State in the 2007 BCS National Championship. That contest, which was fittingly played in the Louisiana Superdome, put Miles and the Tigers on the top of college football to cap off his third season in Baton Rouge.

Miles won't wear the ring on game weeks. But he puts it on strategically as a reminder.

"This is an experience that's shared with the guys that I coach," Miles said. "So I thought about it this morning when I put it on - 'Do you put it on? Yeah, you do.' You put it on and you tell them, 'This is an opportunity.'

"I promise you this: When I got into coaching I did not think I was going to win a national championship."

Miles' peak coincided with the Kansas football program's shining moment. The 2007 Jayhawks began the year unranked before opening the season 11-0. Coach Mark Mangino's squad rose as high as No. 2 in the AP poll, and only a loss to a top-five Missouri team took it out of the national championship picture. The Jayhawks ultimately finished their 12-1 season with a win over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl.

Kansas defeated Virginia Tech to win the Orange Bowl at the end of the 2007 season. It hasn't reached a bowl game since 2008. Marc Serota / Getty Images

"I watched that Kansas team as a potential (opponent) if we could have possibly got 'em into the playoff mix," Miles said. "They looked really good. They looked athletic. The quarterback (Todd Reesing) was a tremendous asset to them."

After the Tigers reached another national championship game in 2011, losing to Alabama, the program finished 13th or worse in the final AP poll in each of Miles' final four full seasons. The 2014 edition went 8-5, tied for Miles' worst record at the school. By then, the demand for championship-level performances was becoming too much, and his old-school offense had turned stale. When LSU started 2-2 in 2016, scoring just 27 combined points in losses to Wisconsin and Auburn, Miles and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron were fired.

Kansas' fall from the top happened more abruptly. After winning eight games in 2008, the program stumbled to a 5-7 mark in 2009. Mangino resigned while KU probed his treatment of players. Since then, the last decade has featured a string of hires - some hopeful (Turner Gill) and others dubious (Charlie Weis). None of them figured out how to win in Lawrence.

Gill earned five victories in two seasons. Weis went 6-22, losing his job four games into his third campaign. David Beaty took over what turned out to be an impossible resurrection project, going 6-42 across four years. Then, in November, new athletic director Jeff Long opted to bring in his own head coach to try and get it right.

Miles has work to do. Kansas is entering the final year of this decade with an 18-90 record overall and a 5-75 mark in Big 12 play. The Jayhawks haven't won more than three games in a season since 2009.

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Miles is Kansas' fifth head coach in 11 seasons (not including interim coaches). Icon Sportswire / Getty Images

This will certainly be a more complicated rebuild than Miles faced 18 years ago, when he coached Oklahoma State to two bowl games in four seasons. On the other hand, expectations in Lawrence are low. If Miles merely gets Kansas to six wins before his tenure ends, he'll have accomplished plenty.

But there are still questions about the coach and the program.

Off the field, Miles has already faced criticism for the one-game suspension handed to Pooka Williams, a running back who entered a domestic violence diversion agreement in March after being charged with domestic battery in December. (The only game Williams will miss is on Saturday, against an FCS opponent.)

At Big 12 media days, Miles' statement on the matter was full of awkward pauses as he appeared to read from prepared notes. When he faced a scrum of reporters later, he said the decision was made by the university and that he was not involved in the disciplinary process, purposefully, because a coach has a biased interest.

"I have always opened my team camp with - there's three women in my family, two daughters and a wife," Miles said. "And if you think when you come to me you're getting somebody that's sympathetic to your cause, you are not if you have mistreated women."

On the field, Miles will have to prove he's made improvements in areas that led to his ouster at LSU.

In his final four full seasons with the Tigers, the team ranked top five in scoring just once during SEC play. In 2014, when LSU lost five games, the program finished second from the bottom in conference scoring. Consistent quarterback play was an issue - and Miles didn't adapt quickly enough to how college football was changing around him.

So, will he be able to adapt in the current Big 12, where elite offense and quarterback play usually wins out?

At media days, Miles talked around the subject of his offense, which will be run by former Mississippi State and Texas A&M coordinator Les Koenning.

"If you take the kids that you have and you're doing the best job with them, you're figuring out what their best offense is," Miles said. "And now you're hitting a long ball now and then; you're throwing with efficiency and you're running the football and you have an opportunity at times to control the clock.

"I think it helps your defense when they walk off the field, and I think you can change the timing of their offense because you've stopped them and put your offense on the field and they're keeping the ball. I think there are some advantages to that as well."

Miles spent nearly three full seasons away from coaching. He hosted a podcast, "Les Is More," for The Players' Tribune. He watched his sons Manny and Ben, both of whom have transferred to Kansas, play football. He watched his youngest daughter, Macy, play softball.

He also kept up on college football by tuning in on Saturdays at home with his oldest daughter, Smacker. She's now providing behind-the-scenes looks at the Kansas football program on social media.

"We would run from bedroom to bedroom and living room to den to see different games that were played and talking about decisions that were made," Miles said. "And, you know, it put me in a constant touch with the game I truly love."

He said there was never a doubt that he wanted to coach again. The only question was about the fit. Miles wanted to be aligned with his next athletic director. He also needed a school willing to take a chance on him - a former national championship coach whose star was fading.

The fit came with Long, who's known the veteran coach since the late 1980s when Long was an assistant athletic director at Michigan and Miles was overseeing the offensive line under Bo Schembechler and Gary Moeller.

So far, the Kansas players Miles inherited seem inspired.

Senior Mike Lee on what he knew about Les Miles: "He's one of five or six coaches that have a national championship ring." Ed Zurga / Getty Images

Safety Mike Lee said he wondered about the possibility of Miles being his coach after reading some tweets about it at the start of last season. Asked what he knew about Miles before he came to Kansas, Lee said: "He's one of five or six coaches that have a national championship ring."

Offensive lineman Hakeem Adeniji said the biggest change he's seen with Miles in charge has been the mindset.

"It involves being selfless, working hard, and doing everything for the greater good of the team because it's about the team, it's not about us as individuals," Adeniji said.

When asked, Miles turned down opportunities to define success in his first season, telling reporters he would never "put a cap" on any team he coaches.

And, despite the challenge he's facing, the Mad Hatter isn't afraid to set the bar high.

"Go to a bowl game is certainly a positive step, right?" he said.

"I think if you give yourself that opportunity to continue to improve, you win some very significant games in the back end of the season … you maybe have the opportunity to play for a championship. So I'm not going to put a top on it, OK? It's going to happen one game at a time, it's going to happen after a good summer camp, a camp where we stay injury-free and we continue to build and work on what would be a Kansas Jayhawk culture."

Mark Cooper is theScore's NCAA writer.

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