FRISCO, Texas — Kansas coach had nearly made it through the entire portion of his press conference at Big 12 media days.

He was nearly able to get off that stage without making more than a passing acknowledgement to the abysmal state of Kansas Jayhawks football. He congratulated new KU AD Jeff Long on earning the job, knowing that most athletic directors install a new head football coach as soon as they’re able.

Beaty gave lip-service to how many wins the Jayhawks need to secure in 2018 to move the program forward in the only metric that matters.

“When it comes to win total, I don’t have that answer,” Beaty said.

The answer is he likely needs to double the number of wins he’s earned as KU’s coach. Beaty is 3-33 at Kansas, and more than likely has to become bowl-eligible to keep his gig.

Then he was asked about The Incident.

The Incident is the infamous non-handshake in Lawrence, Kan., when the Jayhawks hosted Oklahoma. Looking to make a statement, make a splash, KU captains chose not to shake hands with eventual Heisman winner Baker Mayfield.

Which was an insult.

A chippy game became chippier when Mayfield, still smarting from the insult, grabbed his crotch and dropped an F-bomb on national title TV. Still, it was KU who came off looking worst from The Incident.

“I know for our team—I’ll speak for our team—that we learned a lot about that,” Beaty said. “We learned that this game, it’s all about class. It’s about representing your university, your fans, your stakeholders, and that when you make decisions that those decisions gotta be based on more than ourselves.”

Beaty mentioned players like linebacker Joe Dineen were brought to media days after earning his way back into his coach’s good graces. Dineen apologized to all, including Mayfield, when he spoke to the Kansas City Star last year.

“Obviously, it wasn’t mean to be super disrespectful to them,” he said. “It was really just us trying to get our guys motivated and let Oklahoma know that we were there to play.”

“The young men that were involved in that—there’s a couple of them that are here today—and I can assure you that they’re unbelievable young men,” he said. “And they stood up and did what they needed to do to be able to face the criticism that came along with that. So we learned a lot, not just what happened but how you face the criticism that comes along with it.”

There was criticism during and in the months following that 41-3 drubbing on Nov. 11, 2017 at the hands of Big 12 conference champ OU. And Beaty wants to make sure nothing like that ever happens again on his watch.

“But we, as a team, believe there’s no place for that in college athletics,” Beaty said. “We’ve got a good thing going here, and we certainly want to make sure that we’re a positive part of it and not a negative part of it. We’ve got a terrific platform—terrific platform. But it can only be terrific when we use it the right ways.”