Bohls: Is Kansas for real? Lance Leipold bringing Deion-like frenzy to Jayhawks football

By his own admission, Lance Leipold has a lot in common with Deion Sanders.

Well, let him tell you.

“We both breathe,” Leipold said in his patented deadpan style.

So there’s that. But there’s more. The Kansas and Colorado head football coaches both played football and baseball.

“Yeah, I played Division III football and baseball one year, and he played at the major league level,” said Leipold, who was a school record-setting Wisconsin-Whitewater quarterback. “But we’re both going to coach in the Big 12 next year. He played in the NFL. I watched the NFL.”

Oh, and they both wear shades from time to time.

Of course, Coach Prime wore them coming out of the womb while Leipold was a little later to the look-how-cool-I-am party. Leipold, you see, had a cornea transplant just before his 27th birthday, “so I wear sunglasses, too,” he said. “There you go.”

And if you want to nitpick, Leipold is a teeny bit more humble than his Colorado counterpart. Just a tad.

“He’s so real,” Kansas athletic director Travis Goff said. “No fluff. No smoke and mirrors. Substance matters.”

That’s Leipold to the core as he's become a miracle worker for the moribund Kansas program and shows signs of being the next Bill Snyder.

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Goff vetted Leipold so thoroughly that the coach kids that his boss jokes, “The only person I didn’t talk to about him was his kindergarten teacher.”

This self-deprecating Jayhawks coach calls himself “boring” and even brags about preferring plain vanilla milkshakes. Never mind that Leipold was once a small-town police officer and wanted to work for the FBI or Secret Service.

But there are striking similarities between these two high-profile coaches. Honest.

Sanders coaches the Buffaloes, and Leipold once coached the Buffalo Bulls for six seasons, taking them to two MAC East Division titles and three bowl games.

Both coaches have taken their current teams to the Top 25 this season. The Jayhawks, who will play at No. 3 Texas on Saturday, sit at No. 24 in both polls while the Buffs fell out of the rankings after their beatdown at Oregon. But if Sanders keeps plugging, he might make a name for himself yet. And Kansas looks legit again.

“Isn’t that nuts?” Goff said of the ranking. “But we don’t celebrate much. Lance knows more than anybody that we have not achieved the end goal part of this journey, and it’s early.”

In the year of the underdog, why not Kansas?

The relentlessly positive Leipold is a real-life Ted Lasso, although Goff joked, “Ted’s got much more personality than Lance does.” But he noted that Jason Sudeikis, who plays the fictitious college football coach from Wichita and uses his folksy slogans and compassion for players to coach a Premier League soccer team, is “a Kansas City guy and a passionate Jayhawk, so there is a connection.”

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Not unlike 2022, when unheralded TCU reached the CFP final, this has become the year of the underdog. Besides Kansas and Colorado, look no farther than Duke, where second-year coach Mike Elko has the 4-0 Blue Devils hosting College GameDay this weekend — as Kansas did last year — when Notre Dame comes to town.

They’re not alone because Pac-12 castoff Washington State is 4-0, as is No. 25 Fresno State. Air Force might be the best Group of Five team out there. These are parity’s princes.

While we realize Leipold and Sanders might not be the spitting image of each other, they are both wildly successful. And big winners. Be clear about that. In fact, were it not for the charismatic Coach Sunshades, dull ol’ Lance Leipold would again be the talk of college football.

Kind of how he was in 2021 when his 1-8 Kansas club shocked the heavily favored Longhorns at DKR in a pulsating 57-56 overtime contest that altered the futures of both programs. And how he was in 2022 when he took the Jayhawks to a 4-0 start, a national ranking and the program’s first bowl game since 2008. And how he is this year when Kansas again has streaked to 4-0 out of the gate for the second consecutive year — a first since 1914-15 — and into the polls.

Which brings us to now.

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No signs of slowing down

He only says he’s dull. He’s as lively as they come. With a witty sense of humor. And a yearning to connect with his players, whom he has sharing their backgrounds and trials and triumphs amidst bowling and cookouts. Heck, eight packed their bags in Buffalo to join him in Lawrence. And he has an incessant attention to details.

“I knew how he operated, and I trusted him,” said senior center Mike Novitsky, one of those Bulls who followed Leipold, the only coach to offer him a scholarship. “We always talk about getting 1% better every day. Every day he’ll pull the best out of you.”

He can deadpan all he wants. After breaking that 56-game road losing streak in Big 12 play in Austin, he cracked that had he done better homework before accepting the moribund KU job, “I might never have taken the interview.”

But take it he did. And Kansas has been on a relative rocket ship ever since.

With no signs of slowing down.

Even though an injury to all-star quarterback Jalon Daniels put a hiccup in the Jayhawks’ ambitions last year, they still reached the Liberty Bowl, barely losing to Arkansas.

And thanks to 13 transfers, including thick defensive tackle Devin Phillips from Colorado State, linebacker J.B. Brown from Bowling Green, Texas State’s former kicker Seth Keller and a couple of elite defensive linemen from Minnesota in Austin Booker and Gage Keys, Kansas is even better this season, with a stronger defense, the same dynamic Daniels and a more physical bent that makes the Jayhawks for real.

"They're playing a really confident brand of football," Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said.

Kansas won’t venture into DKR with any fear, but Goff reminds, “The Longhorns came up here last year and kicked our rear ends.”

And this is a much improved Sarkisian team.

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Prepping to win in Austin (again)

Leipold said there’s been no mention of the 17-point spread favoring Texas, but he knows his players are aware of it. He said watching Longhorns tape is keeping him up nights.

“I watched the Alabama game, and I went, ‘Whoa,’ “ Leipold said. “They’ve got it in every area now. They’ve got speed. They’ve got weapons. An athletic tight end. Big in both lines, but athletic. They kind of keep coming at you in waves, and then I mentioned (Sarkisian’s) ability as a play-caller. … I hope maybe Texas is working on some OU plays instead of ours.”

Nice try, Lance.

The outlandish point spread aside, this is a focused Texas team that so far has prided itself in not looking ahead. And Leipold knows “we’re not sneaking up on people anymore because opponents realize Kansas isn’t a layup anymore.”

Hardly.

Last Saturday, Kansas actually bullied a historically physical BYU team, and the Jayhawks are playing like the team that jumped on Texas 35-14 by halftime in 2021, not like the one the Longhorns pummeled a year ago.

The Jayhawks have gone 10-7 since the Ambush in Austin. That said, it’s a Kansas team that’s very grounded and isn’t getting ahead of itself. But the Jayhawks are brimming with confidence. Leipold can say his club’s overtime win at DKR is “old news,” but the Longhorns have long memories.

But so do Kansas fans, who now come out in droves to watch their second-favorite set of Jayhawks, thank you, Bill Self. Leipold hasn’t quite made KU a football school, but it is averaging 44,471 fans, more than double the number in Leipold’s first season in 2021, and has sold out David Booth Stadium three times.

“There’s a lot of energy around here, even off campus. Grocery stores, everywhere,” senior linebacker Rich Miller. “Everybody’s saying congratulations and rooting for us, but we have to give them something to root for. There is no ceiling. We’re blowing the ceiling off everything. We’re shooting for the stars. We would love to go undefeated.”

So would the 59-year-old Leipold, who isn’t planning on going anywhere after getting a $5 million salary with a $750,000 signing bonus and a big extension through 2029 last November with a $5 million payroll for his staff. He’s putting down roots in Lawrence, and Goff said he’s “not nervous at all” about losing Leipold.

“If you look at my whole career, I haven’t been a job-hopper,” Leipold said. “I feel like you’ve got to see some things through, and I know last year it would have been awful hard to look at those young men and leave under two years. My wife and I are extremely happy here.

“You know you can never say never in this game, but it’s our expectation that we finish our career at the University of Kansas. We have a chance to do some things here that people didn’t think would ever be done.”

Heck, Travis Kelce showed up at a Jayhawks basketball game last season, and the world saw viewers lose their minds when his good friend Taylor Swift was on hand with his mother to cheer on the Kansas City Chiefs.

“Shoot, I’ve never seen anything get more publicity in my life,” Leipold said. “Holy cow. Somebody made a comment that she said five or 10 years ago that Lawrence was her favorite college community or college town, so who knows? Hey, if it helps fill the place, I’m all in.”

That’s Lance Leipold, spoken like a true Swiftie. Top that, Deion.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Kansas' Lance Leipold has put Jayhawks on the map and kept them there