How Lance Leipold Rebuilt Kansas Football
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Hey friends! For today’s newsletter, I want to highlight one of my favorite stories in college football this year — Kansas football.
When people think about the greatest dynasties across college football’s storied history, a handful of programs with similar historical pedigrees typically come to mind.
Between the early, traditional rise of Notre Dame and Michigan, Penn State’s run of excellence in the 80s, Nebraska’s ascent in the 90s, to the modern dominance of Miami and Alabama to round out the 21st century, several blue blood programs have enjoyed repeated stints of sustained supremacy.
While each of the squads above were once led to generational prominence by unparalleled coaching giants, a figure that built an empire on the backs of an unheard-of 94.7% winning clip still remains largely unnoticed across college football’s current landscape.
Meet Lance Leipold — the current head coach of the revitalized Kansas Jayhawks. Before you search for the Wisconsin native’s resume, no, he does not boast previous head coaching experience at an esteemed Power Five institution.
However, in the span of just eight years, Leipold cultivated a true dynasty at Wisconsin-Whitewater where he won as many national titles as Bear Bryant did throughout 30 seasons in Tuscaloosa.
In less than a decade, the former Whitewater gunslinger carried the Warhawks to six NCAA Division III Football Championships on the heels of five undefeated seasons in command of the sidelines. Moreover, Leipold reached the 100-win mark faster than any coach in NCAA history when he completed the feat following his 106th overall matchup.
After an unprecedented run embarked by his unique cultural foundation in Whitewater, Leipold shockingly decided to up and leave his alma mater in favor of the University of Buffalo head job prior to the 2015 campaign.
Undoubtedly, the move to a lower-tier Division I, MAC Conference program after paving the mold of excellence at the Division III level posed initial challenges for Leipold.
Two weeks ago, I sat down with Leipold to discuss his ascension in the coaching ranks since leaving Whitewater in 2014. When touching upon the initial onset of setbacks he took head-on with the Buffalo job, Leipold mentioned that his current rebuild of Kansas’ program draws several similarities from what he attempted to originally instill into Buffalo’s locker room.
“There were definitely some similarities,” Leipold said. “[Now], we’re not far from the [Kansas City] Chiefs, and the success of the Chiefs. With our distance from the Bills [at Buffalo], that’s one aspect. The word, I don’t know if apathy would be the right one, but where you kind of sit on your campus, I’ve kind of heard our players talk, really after the West Virginia win, about being able to walk around campus with a little bit more pride. There are probably some things culturally that touched this program that we saw some similarities to [at] Buffalo that we worked on, and are still changing. I think they’re all changing for the good.”
In both spots, Leipold chose to take on incomprehensibly vast rebuilding projects. Before landing at Buffalo, the Bulls enjoyed just one winning season between their previous five campaigns. But, when Leipold finally put his stamp of the program’s identity, Buffalo’s trajectory skyrocketed.
Without holding claim to his own recruiting classes across his first three seasons in upstate New York, the head coach only garnered 12 victories — good for a measly average of three triumphs per year. Quickly after the continual run of strife, Leipold caught lightning in a bottle by winning 18 games over his final two stints in Buffalo.
While Leipold would be the last to admit it, the Wisconsin native has been a better judge of the talent-to-character ratio than any other evaluator for the better part of his 15-year run as a head coach. His secret is simple — dominate the close, tight-knit regional areas in hopes of forming long-lasting relationships.
“You know, growing up in Wisconsin, coaching DII ball in Nebraska, and being in Buffalo, we’re not hitting the metropolitan hotbeds of what people in the country view for high school football recruiting,” Leipold said. “But, anybody knows that in those areas, there have been very good football players and programs have won… We can find players that can help us win within a drivable radius, like a lot of places. But, as we know, between the transfer portal [and] junior college, everything is going to be a little bit of a mixture to see how rosters are put together these days.”
Since taking over a Kansas program that suffered through an abysmal 0-9 cold spell in 2019, Leipold has transformed a former Power Five laughing stock into a formidable Top-25 program. Through four matchups in the head coach’s second go-around in 2022, the Jayhawks now reside at the top of the Big 12 standings at a solid 4-0 clip. Moreover, Leipold’s offense is currently scoring over 48 points per outing, equating to the second-most in the air-raid-oriented conference.
For all of Leipold’s career, the scheme, philosophy, and driving force behind his unparalleled consistency have always remained steady. But, for the first time in his tenure repping the headset, the head coach is finally receiving an additional level of buy-in from others outside the facility’s confines.
In July, the Kansas administration announced its intentions to spearhead a $350 million renovation to revitalize David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Additionally, Leipold and athletic director Travis Goff have been at the forefront of conference realignment conversations, with many slotting the Jayhawks as a contender in the Big Ten’s next wave of expansion efforts.
Certainly, Leipold realizes there’s a long way to go until Kansas football receives the same respect treatment as Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and other regional mainstays, but, the moves certainly points towards a transition of positivity.
“Coming from the MAC, you know, facility-wise and things like that, it was better than what we had,” Leipold said. “But, one thing in today’s world is that everybody’s building something for recruiting, and we’re working on those [projects]. Those haven’t really changed, but we are continuing to make progress.”
After taking down a plethora of quality opponents in West Virginia, Houston, Duke, and Iowa State over the Jayhawks’ latest four matchups, Leipold’s red-hot offense is set to clash with TCU this upcoming Saturday in a highly-anticipated home battle with Big 12 championship implications.
Over the last decade, fans and national audiences alike typically have been prone to lose interest in Kansas football heading into the week six slate. Now, the story has completely reserved. For the first time in three years, the Jayhawks will play in front of a sold-out home crowd against the Horned Frogs in consecutive weeks. Furthermore, for the first time in program history, Kansas will play host to ESPN’s College GameDay pregame program prior to the squad’s first ranked matchup since 2009.
Without losing sight of the program’s main goals, Leipold admitted that he has found himself soaking in the program’s recent run of rapid success — and rightfully so. The next game mentality is always the most important one to carry throughout college football’s 12-game regular season gauntlet, but Leipold and the Jayhawks have every reason to enjoy fall Saturdays in Lawrence once again for the first time in ages.
“This start does feel good,” Leipold said. “Because when you start looking at, sometimes you don’t even know until you get here, about some of the things that happened over the past decade, and then in the short term, some of the players have had up to eight position coaches [and] three head coaches. Just the desire for some stability and consistency, and to see some of that work pay off, the guys have really bought in, really from the time we got here. To see it start to get some early dividends is neat for their sake.”
My full interview with Lance Leipold on Next Up by Mercury Podcast ⬇️
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by email at adam@brenemanmedia.com.
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Shoutout to Connor Krause for helping to write this newsletter and putting the whole thing together!