How Lance Leipold has stabilized, and energized, the Kansas Jayhawks football program
With its long-languishing football program once again — or maybe just still? — in chaos after the abrupt end of another misbegotten coaching decision some 17 months ago, Kansas Athletics at last stopped grasping at smoke and mirrors, gimmicks or guesses.
The previous four hires had either been past their prime or not not ready for prime time; the KU compass had spun wildly in hopes of making a splash with a “name” … to connecting on a Hail Mary with a budget hamstrung by buyouts.
Under then-new athletic director Travis Goff, though, KU last year applied a relatively radical concept: an entirely logical hire that prioritized substance and practicality and fit, starkly in contrast with the theatrics and oddities of the Les Miles era immediately preceding.
In turning to then-Buffalo coach Lance Leipold, Kansas went for a straightforward and no-nonsense man, one who is pleasant but not flashy and who certainly would rather be known for genuineness than sizzle.
For that matter, he refers to all he does as part of a collaborative effort with a staff that he stressed he wouldn’t stand here without when he first met with the media in Lawrence (and has pointed out ever since).
So
what you see is what you get with Leipold, you could surmise in his approach when he was hired … and see all the more now.
That’s part of why we have every belief that Leipold, 58, is the right man at the right time for KU, which opens its season against Tennessee Tech on Sept. 2 at Memorial Stadium.
Not that anything is remotely certain for Kansas as it tries to find traction toward being competitive for the first time since Mark Mangino was forced out in 2009.
But something compelling and intriguing happened even as KU went 2-10 in Leipold’s first season.
It wasn’t just that truly incredible 57-56 overtime win in Austin,
nicely encapsulated by seldom-seen walk-on Jared Casey scoring the winning points against the talent-rich Longhorns.
It also was that Kansas was 1-8 when it pulled that off and had been blasted 35-10 by Kansas State the week before.
That had left even Leipold wondering whether his first team might go through the motions at season’s end and enjoy just taking “a look around the nicer stadiums one more time before they hit the road.”
Instead, that week in Austin became at least a tentative inflection point. Not only did the Jayhawks beat Texas, they also nearly upended TCU in Fort Worth a week later before falling 31-28. Then they acquitted themselves well in a 34-28 loss against West Virginia in the season finale.
If you accept that you typically have to walk before you can run in these scenarios, that was obvious progress against gravity.
Just the same …
“A statement like this may bite me some day, but we can’t play for moral victories,” Leipold said in his office on Wednesday. “There’s not a ‘moral victory’ column in this thing.”
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That end of the season, though, generated what Leipold considered a real “buzz” within a team that a year ago was the youngest among the Power Five, reflected emerging discipline (the fifth-fewest penalties a game, 4.08, in the nation) and returns 17 starters who figure to be bolstered by a Big 12-high 19 transfers.
Leipold felt that energy gather momentum this spring and into camp, especially with a group that the coaches actually know this time around … and a group that in turn knows the coaches and their expectations and now understands the systems in an entirely different way.
So it’s easy to see why Leipold says the difference between where the team is now and was a year ago is like “night and day.”
Heck, he’ll tell you he
knows “we’re a better football team.”
But he also knows it’s time to take more tangible steps, and that one of the challenges of Year Two inherently is that the honeymoon period is fading and that the reality check looms.
So he smiles at the thought that people might feel they’ve heard this story of being on the cusp of a turnaround before … only to be disappointed. And he asks the questions even of himself.
“How much better (they’ll be) is going to be told here in the first month of the season,” he said. “As we progress and then go from there, have we truly taken another step from those last three games?
“We’re saying it, we’re talking about it, people like yourself are writing about it. But now … we have to go out and start doing it.”
Especially because the future is always now in coaching. In this case, it’s also about how now affects the future as Kansas tries to catch up in the facilities arms race.
“What keeps me up at night is taking another step to keep people believing,” he said. “Because part of people believing and saying nice things is getting people to come to the stadium.”
As conscious as Leipold is of adapting as needed, his constancy still resonates and is reaffirmed in almost any conversation with him.
Like the one we had when we got talking about the job at KU within the flux in college sports … such as NIL and the transfer portal and ever-churning conference realignment.
He thought about how he and his staff work to be alert and nimble to the changing times, not to mention appreciating the wider canvas of the highest-profile job he’s ever had and all that comes with that.
But at its heart, and in his heart, this job remains to him less about the level of football than the essence of coaching.
His degree of worry about letting people down or not doing his end of it drove him as much at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater (where he led his teams to six national titles) as at Buffalo of the Mid-American Conference as it does at Kansas of the Big 12.
For that matter, Leipold still is a reflection of his foundation as a “small-town Wisconsin guy who played Division III sports” (at Wisconsin-Whitewater).
As such, he’ll tell you he’s in this now for the same reasons he always has been: to compete, mold, teach, set an example and provide opportunity.
“I’ve always kind of inwardly cringed when people say, ‘I know it’s a business, Coach,’” he said. “Well, when you’re coaching D-3 football (and) riding buses for 10 hours, you’re not really thinking about the business part of it.
“The only business I had to worry about was how many hole sponsors and foursomes I got for the golf outing to make sure we could pay for the trip.”
In some ways, of course, this job is entirely different. But you can also see that his past and his path made him a particular fit for a program with far fewer resources than most of its competitors.
“We can’t control if we have the nicest stadium or the nicest facilities,” he said. “But we can control our attitude and effort.”
That may mean having to be “a little scrappier,” and that the vehicles to success perhaps aren’t “as bright and shiny” as they are elsewhere.
Seeing it that way might not have made for a splash last year. But it certainly has the makings of something with more staying power: a prevailing wave ahead.
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