DAZN features Roundtable with Coach Leopold
There are thirty more Saturdays until the Kansas Jayhawks and Arizona State Sun Devils become the first programs to play a college football game at Wembley Stadium.
For fans, that no doubt seems a lifetime away. But there’s a lot of work to be done ahead of the inaugural Union Jack Classic on September 19th.
Speaking to the UK media, Kansas head coach Lance Leipold discussed their excitement for the team’s trip to London in Week 3, the magnitude of the logistics involved, and offered some thoughts to the Jayhawks’ recruiting and transfer portal activity in what has been a hectic offseason to date.
Modern day roster construction
In years gone by, fans of Jayhawk football would have killed for a 5-7 season. In the eleven years prior to Lance Leipold’s arrival as head coach in 2021, the most games Kansas won in any one campaign was three, and two of those seasons didn’t have any victories at all.
But things have changed in Lawrence. Leipold, the ultimate program builder, has raised the bar. And after leading KU to 9-3 and being nationally ranked in 2023, back to back seasons without a bowl game feels disappointing, despite raw memories of Les Miles, David Beaty, Charlie Weiss and Turner Gill still fresh in the mind.
Kansas, long known as a basketball school, have refocused their commitment to football since Leipold took the helm. David Booth Memorial Stadium is being rebuilt, part of an $800m redevelopment of the Gateway district where the sports facilities reside, putting the facilities up there with the elite programs in the sport.