If you wanted a good meal, would it matter to you what the chef looked like? If your screenplay was being turned into a film, would it matter to you how much the director weighed? So why, pray tell, was Mark Mangino’s door not knocked down by Michigan, West Virginia, UCLA or any of the other 15 schools that had coaching vacancies this offseason?

Because he is overweight, bald and considered at times to be surly.

One other thing about him: his trophy case now features the 2007 Big 12 Coach of the Year award along with eight separate National Coach of the Year awards. Plus, he won an Orange Bowl at the University of Kansas, for crying out loud.

Because there isn’t great precedent for overweight coaches ascending to the peak of college football, maybe it’s best to juxtapose Mangino’s plight with that of minority coaches. Last season, only seven D-1A schools employed minority coaches, less than 6 percent of total schools. This year, the number will slightly grow to eight after UCLA fired Karl Dorrell and Houston hired Oklahoma assistant Kevin Sumlin and Navy promoted assistant Ken Niumatalolo.

It’s always good to see progress. Kudos to the athletics directors. That’s neither here nor there, though, because these guys aren’t bigoted. Just amazingly short-sighted.

I remember what an ESPN football analyst said of the process of drafting quarterbacks, “If you are going to miss, miss big.” The premise being that if you are going to make a mistake, make it on someone who has all the measurables — the height, the rocket arm, the athleticism, etc. That way, if the player is a bust, it is his own fault for not taking advantage of God-given abilities and the executive dodges all criticism.

The NCAA’s motto could be, “If you are going to miss, miss white and marketable.” That is why Al Bohl, KU’s athletic director from 2001-2003, should have received a nice fat royalty check from whatever tidy profit the football team brought in this year. Bohl, in his last major hire, swung for the fence and hit a grand slam with a coach who wasn’t good looking or marketable. Instead of pleasing the boosters with a slick-talking, slick-haired hotshot, he brought in someone who speaks in clichés and hasn’t been able to spike his bangs in a while.

Instead, he was a coaching genius. Novel searching concept for a school with an atrocious football program. Mangino was among the coaches who resurrected K-State from the depths as an assistant coach from 1991-98. He won the Frank Broyles Award as the country’s top assistant coach in 2000 during a three-year stint at Oklahoma.

Bohl had the courage to push all his chips into the middle because he saw great potential and was desperate. Which brings us to the original question: After Mangino proved he was among the country’s elite coaches, why wasn’t he inundated with coaching offers this offseason? Most everyone else was.

Associate Athletics Director Jim Marchiony said he couldn’t disclose whether a school had asked to speak to Mangino but said he had “expected more” interest.

Tom Keegan, Lawrence Journal-World sports editor, said he didn’t know of any school that had an interest in Mangino and said he wasn’t surprised that the elite schools with openings didn’t come after Mangino. He said this was because the coach was “new on the scene as an elite guy.”

I’m not sure that was the case. Arkansas hired a con man, who couldn’t even finish the season at his previous job as coach for the Atlanta Falcons (Bobby Petrino). UCLA hired a coach who has had problems follow him at every stop and was essentially blackballed from college since 2002 (Rick Neuheusel). West Virginia hired a coach who used the “n” word when referring to a player at his previous head coaching stop (Bill Stewart). And Michigan hired a guy who promptly shredded documents at his old school and is trying to dodge a contractually obligated $4 million buyout (Rich Rodriguez).. It’s pathetic. These bastions of higher learning are willing to roll the dice on candidates with character concerns for their head coaching positions but not on men with impeccable character whom the boosters’ wives won’t swoon after.

Bohl defied a social stigma by hiring a man whose appearance seemed to suggest he couldn’t motivate college athletes. Bad assumption. Paradoxically, Mangino has won by recruiting athletes whose appearances seemed to suggest they couldn’t win.

Prime on that list would be Todd Reesing, Jake Sharp and James McClinton. Reesing was the pint-sized Texan quarterback who wasn’t even wanted by Baylor. Sharp was the white running back (how many are there in football’s highest division?) who, with a different skin pigmentation and bigger hometown, would have had every school in the nation after him (seriously, check out his high school stats and measurables). And James McClinton was the wrecking ball who was too small. I could go on: Bill Whittemore was too small with no arm strength. Brandon McAnderson was too pudgy. Charles Gordon was too small and slow. And Jon Cornish was too Canadian.

Mangino won with these players because he is these players. The athletics directors at the big boys, the Texas A&Ms, the Michigans, the Nebraskas, don’t want to defy conventional wisdom because it could cost them their seven-figure salaries if it fails. It is the reason we still have Mangino in Lawrence.

Still, a part of me wanted to see the big guy “date Cindy Crawford.” This was former Utah basketball coach Rick Majerus’s apt metaphor for coaching at a prestigious school. Majerus is another coach who never got the opportunity because of body issues.

I can’t imagine what Mangino could have done with four- and five-star recruits. He won the Orange Bowl with a roster full of one-, two- and three-stars. Maybe he would have stayed that route. Those are his guys.

—Edited by Matt Hirschfeld