Kansas football earns chance to play in this season’s Guaranteed Rate Bowl
LAWRENCE — Kansas football learned Sunday that it will play in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl this year.
The news comes after the Jayhawks wrapped up their best regular season in more than a decade, at 8-4 overall and 5-4 against the Big 12 Conference. That’s the most wins they’ve had in a season since 2008, and most wins they’ve had in a regular season since 2007. And they’ll have a chance to add to it Dec. 26 when they play in their bowl game against UNLV (9-4, 6-2 in Mountain West Conference) in Phoenix, Arizona.
“I can’t tell you how excited we are to be selected to play in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, have an opportunity to spend Christmas in beautiful Arizona,” Kansas head coach Lance Leipold said. “Our players have worked extremely hard over the last three years and to have the opportunity to be bowl eligible two consecutive years and have a chance to play in a bowl game such as this. It’s an extremely exciting time for our program.”
This marks the first time in more than a decade that Kansas will play in a bowl game in back-to-back seasons, following the AutoZone Liberty Bowl appearance against Arkansas in 2022. That stretch dates back to 2007-08, when the program captured victories in the Orange Bowl and Insight Bowl. It shows the extent to which Leipold’s rebuild, in just its third year, has continued to exceed expectations.
This 2023 season has already included an upset win at home against now-No. 12 Oklahoma and impressive win on the road against Iowa State. It’s included a couple close defeats at home, against Texas Tech and Kansas State, that have had many wondering where the Jayhawks could be if a handful of plays had gone differently. Overall, Kansas has gone 5-2 at home and 3-2 on the road, and will now be playing its first neutral site game of the year.
UNLV will be entering in off of a loss in the Mountain West championship game against Boise State, but still with an opportunity to win 10 games in head coach Barry Odom's first season with the program. Leipold praised the job Odom has done to produce such a quick turnaround with the Rebels, and noted that the Jayhawks almost played against an Odom-coached team last year. Odom was an assistant coach on the staff at Arkansas, but was named the head coach at UNLV before Kansas' bowl game against the Razorbacks.
“This was at the top of the list; we’re right there,” said Leipold, asked if the Guaranteed Rate Bowl was one of the ones his team was preparing to potentially play in. “I look at, as I said a little earlier about student-athlete experience, sometimes destination of where you have players from — and if that’s not 1A, 1B is also places where young men have maybe never been or may never get back to maybe in their life. And I think this is one of those places. If you’ve never been to the valley there it’s a beautiful area.”
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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football earns chance to play as a part of Guaranteed Rate Bowl
