LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Cold does not happen in Central America. So on a night like Monday, when Doug Meacham walked outside into a lingering blast of winter after the first practice of his first spring as offensive coordinator at Kansas, his mind may have wandered briefly to a faraway surfing hot spot.

Every year for a week in late June or early July, Meacham visits the beaches of Jaco or Tamarindo or farther south along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Sometimes he visits alone. Days start at noon. He grabs lunch, surfs until dark, then heads for a massage, to dinner, the casino and repeat.

“A lot of coaches obsess over football 24-7,” Meacham said. “They never get away from it. I have a bunch of different interests.”

Chief among his non-football passions are skydiving, which he took up last year, and surfing. Meacham, 52, has never lived near an ocean, but it calls to him -- the waves, the sand, the breeze.

“It works for me to be able to reset my mind and start over,” said Meacham, who was lured by longtime confidante David Beaty to Kansas two months ago after three seasons as the playcaller at TCU. “Once you get back [to coaching], you’re ready to go at it. Then you can reflect back on that beach and go, ‘It’s awesome. I look forward to doing that again next year.’”

But why KU, 2-22 in two years under Beaty? Why now?

Meacham, you may notice, dances to the beat of his own drum.

Late on a morning last week, as he readied for spring ball, sounds from a Juicy J-themed Spotify playlist filled Meacham’s office. A pair of desk lamps provided the only light. Two phones sat in front of the coach, who talks of finding a place to live here with a view of Massachusetts Street, the eclectic center of downtown activity.

“If you didn’t know me,” he said, “you probably wouldn’t think I was a football coach.”

In that way, Meacham said, he’s like Mike Leach of Washington State and West Virginia’s Dana Holgorsen. Along with Beaty and others, they’re teachers of the Air Raid offense, which Meacham continues to implement at Kansas.

Already during his short time with the Jayhawks, Meacham has lifted the energy in the football building.

“There’s certain dudes that you just want to be around,” Beaty said. “He’s kind of that guy, high energy and fun.”

Before Meacham jumped to Kansas -- a move that turned heads in the Big 12 -- he seemingly had it made at TCU. The Horned Frogs, in his first two years, won 23 of 26 games and ranked fourth nationally in total yards and points.

TCU coach Gary Patterson, despite a slip to 6-7 in 2016, said he hoped to keep Meacham.

Beaty persisted, though. When he got the job at Kansas in December 2014, Beaty first courted Meacham. But with Trevone Boykin returning at quarterback after TCU had narrowly missed a spot in the initial College Football Playoff, Meacham couldn’t join his friend.

This time, it felt right.

“In terms of career and what I wanted to do long-term, this was a good place,” Meacham said. “A lot of the things that are important to [Beaty] are really important to me.”

Additionally, Meacham had coached with Kansas special teams coordinator Joe DeForest and linebackers coach Todd Bradford at Oklahoma State and with co-defensive coordinator Kenny Perry at TCU.

Meacham believed Kansas was on the right trajectory. “The talk around the league is, ‘Hey, they’re turning the corner. It’s not going to be a layup. They’re a little better than you want them to be.’ The arrow is pointing up," he said, "so I just want to be a part of that transformation.”

For him, coaching is all about culture. “What affects your every day is people -- what you eat, where you sleep, the people you’re around,” Meacham said. “And what you notice with the players here is they don’t quit. These guys want to win so bad because they feel like Coach Beaty and these coaches care about them.”

Meacham’s relationship with Beaty dates two decades to the Texas recruiting battlefields.

Before 2005, they crossed paths as Meacham worked at several small programs in the South and Beaty coached high school football in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Meacham landed a job at Oklahoma State in 2005. A year later, Beaty went to work at Rice, followed by a stint at Kansas and another at Rice before he moved to Texas A&M in 2012.

Both coaches recruited the DFW Metroplex. After long days during the spring evaluation period, they’d often meet in evening to unwind or catch a Texas Rangers game with a crew that included Perry, who was coaching high school football in Arlington, fellow prep coach Joey McGuire, now at Baylor, and ex-Missouri assistant Dave Steckel, now the head coach at Missouri State.

“When you start recruiting at a high level,” Beaty said, “you realize that there’s a couple of those dudes who are standing around you at all times. And you start realizing who’s really good at that and who’s not.”

The hardest guy to beat? Meacham, according to Beaty.

“I thought I was really good with the kids,” Beaty said, “but he was very, very good with the kids. And after a while, our conversations went away from coaching and went into friendship.”

Beaty, in fact, said he encouraged Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin to hire Meacham in 2013 as a replacement for departed offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. Sumlin instead went with Jake Spavital. Meacham landed at Houston, and a year later, on Beaty’s recommendation, connected with Patterson at TCU.

A year after that, Beaty got the job at Kansas.

“I’m not very smart,” Beaty said, “but I know talent when I see it, and that guy’s a talented son of a gun. He’s really, really good. Really smart.

“It was good to finally get him with us.”

And if Beaty plays his cards right this spring, maybe he’ll get invited on a surfing trip.