On May 4, 2021, shortly after Kansas hired Lance Leipold, I reached out to Tim Riordan of UB Bull Run to see what KU was getting in its new head coach.
Five years later, Kansas has experienced a remarkable turnaround, followed by a frustrating regression. The majority of this interview was conducted following the loss to K-State, which made the Jayhawks 2-4 on the season. Add in 18 consecutive games lost to their in-state rival, and fans are asking serious questions about the program's direction.
Note that the interview didn't finalize until after KU's collapse against TCU. At the time of publication, the Jayhawks are 3-5, and need to win three of their final four contests to qualify for a bowl game.
I thought it would be interesting to revisit our original conversation and see how Tim's observations have held up, and, perhaps more importantly, whether we're asking the right questions about where Kansas football goes from here.
–
Tim, welcome back to Rock Chalk Talk! I know that UBBR was shuttered in 2022, so what have you been up to lately? Have you forgiven us for stealing Lance Leipold yet? And has enough time passed that you're finally willing to apologize for sending us Turner Gill?
Seriously, though, when we last spoke, you described Leipold as a flexible coach and an excellent program builder. Five years later, Kansas went from arguably the worst Power Five football program in America to consecutive bowl appearances, including a nine-win season in 2023. But the Jayhawks followed that with consecutive 5-7 seasons and are now 2-4 in 2026.
Looking at the entire body of work, has Leipold's tenure unfolded the way you expected?
I've been enjoying life as a fan and only a fan. My kids have gone from being very young to young adults, and I think I'm probably better off not running the site anymore. I enjoy being able to watch football without feeling like I have to turn every Saturday into work.
The other thing is that, if you're a mid-major fan, the transfer portal has turned following your team into an annual game of "Who's that guy?" Talent doesn't stay and develop the way it used to, and it's harder to build that connection with a roster when half the team might be people you've never heard of by the next season.
As for the Leipold-Gill situation, I don't think any apologies were ever due. Gill was the man of the moment for Buffalo because he got the team to believe. His records at Buffalo and Liberty show he can coach; his record at Kansas suggests he wasn't able to reach that same level of success there. Those things can both be true.
I was never upset with Kansas for hiring Leipold. He was on everyone's radar, and he'd done very well at Buffalo. If anything, I was more upset with how Leipold handled the whole thing than with Kansas for hiring him.
–
What were your expectations for Leipold at Kansas? Has he come up short, exceeded, or been about what you thought?
Looking at the sum of his work I'm a bit disappointed. I would have thought you would be a pretty consistent 7-8 win team with the occasional 10-win season. Especially after they seemed to finally get their team and system in place during year three.
Still, aside from Mark Mangino he's delivering the most consistent results the Jayhawks have seen in a long time. I don't envy the person who has to decide on his future at this point.
–
One of the things you emphasized in 2021 was Leipold's ability to build a program that could sustain success through normal roster turnover. You contrasted his success at Buffalo with Jeff Quinn's reliance on a handful of outstanding players. That caught my attention because Kansas has struggled to maintain its 2023 success after losing many of the players who helped turn the program around. Is that a fair comparison to make? Has Leipold struggled to reproduce at Kansas one of the qualities that made him successful at Buffalo, or are the circumstances too different to draw that conclusion?
Being a Buffalo fan, I've always joked that our coaches fall into three categories: they're great and get snatched away, they're terrible and get fired, or they're somewhere in the middle and fail upward into a coordinator job at a bigger school.
But that's not really the situation at Kansas. Buffalo is a place where you know that if a coach is successful, eventually a bigger program with more money is probably going to come calling. Kansas has the resources to make a real commitment to football and keep a good coach around. They don't have the same built-in limitations that Buffalo does.
That's why I think the expectations have to be different. Leipold has done a great job getting Kansas to a place where people take the football program seriously again. But Kansas has the money and the backing to make that progress stick. At some point, the question isn't just whether Leipold can build the program. It's whether he can sustain it, and whether Kansas can turn that investment into consistent results.
The other side of that, though, is that Kansas has to be careful not to fire a program builder just because the team hits a rough patch. You can get impatient, decide you've seen enough, and end up replacing a coach who was building something with someone who takes you right back where you started. Finding that sweet spot between expecting results and giving a coach enough time to build something sustainable is hard. Kansas shouldn't give Leipold a free pass, but they also shouldn't assume the next guy will be better.
–
I'm going to quote you from our 2021 interview. When I asked whether you had any concerns about Leipold as a gameday coach, particularly regarding clock management and other situational decisions, your response was:
"OH GOSH YES!"
You went on to describe questionable clock and game management in the latter portions of halves, and called it your biggest criticism of him as a gameday coach.
Well, Tim, I'm afraid we need to revisit that answer. Kansas has experienced a remarkable number of late-half problems over the past few seasons. This year alone, KU has surrendered a potential halftime lead in the final two minutes against Missouri, Arizona State, and Kansas State. Across 2024 and 2025, KU held fourth quarter leads in nine games that the Jayhawks ultimately lost.
Do these failures resemble what you saw at Buffalo? Did you ever see meaningful improvement in Leipold's situational coaching during his six seasons there?
I think every coach has blind spots, and obviously Leipold is no exception. What he needs to do is hand off that responsibility to someone else on staff. I don't know if it's pride or an inability to let go of that control but he's always been bad at it.
And this translates to his players. Not trying to stay inbounds against Missouri is a coaching failure. To Leipold's credit, he owned it.
–
You suggested that Leipold should delegate some of his game-management responsibilities to another member of the staff. Do you know if he ever tried anything like that at Buffalo? Is this something you think can be fixed through better staff organization, or is it a fundamental weakness that we'll just have to live with as long as Leipold is the head coach?
He never did anything at Buffalo like that, I do wish he had, though, as it cost us more than one game.
And the more I think about it the more I think that's one of the more awkward things to pawn off on a staff member. After doing a deep dive, NCAA rules say only a head coach or player on the field can call a timeout. So it would have to be someone who can bark in Lance's ear.
–
Leipold brought much of his Buffalo coaching staff to Kansas, including defensive coordinator Brian Borland and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki. Kotelnicki departed for Penn State after the 2023 season, and KU's offense hasn't consistently matched the production we saw with him calling plays. (Kotelnicki has returned for 2026.)
How much of Leipold's success at Buffalo would you attribute to the quality and continuity of his assistants? And do you think he's demonstrated an ability to evolve his staff and approach when circumstances change? Kansas fans were never happy with Borland, and his replacement, a promoted position coach, is having a real tough time so far this season.
Once Borland got the pieces he wanted in place, Buffalo's defense was good. There were areas of concern, to be sure, but overall it was a dependable unit that didn't really lose games. But as I remember it our defense seldom was the key factor in winning games.
I think after they rebuilt the Kansas defense that fits what he did there. You were never a juggernaut but had a respectable defense. (This is me going back and looking though NCAA rankings from 2023-2024.)
I can't speak much to DK McDonald, other than to say your defense seems to be taking a step back. Leipold likes continuity, but to be honest, I don't think McDonald earned that in the same way the five coaches he brought from Buffalo … sigh … had earned it.
–
I understand that Leipold values loyalty and continuity. Those are admirable qualities, generally speaking. But when you're making several million dollars a year to run a major college football program, making difficult personnel decisions is part of the job description.
They are admirable if they're not taken too far (like any trait). It builds a culture of stability and trust. If you've ever been in a work place where those are lacking, you know what I'm talking about.
–
Player development was another strength you identified. You specifically cited Kyle Vantrease as an example of a quarterback who benefited from Leipold's coaching.
I don't know how much you've followed Leipold and Kansas since 2021, but I'll ask anyway – do you have any way to evaluate KU's player development and roster construction under Leipold? Is there anything about the way his Buffalo teams recruited and developed talent that might explain the inconsistency we're seeing at Kansas?
I think this is apples and oranges for a lot of reasons.
First, at Buffalo, you're talking about a mid-mid-major. Leipold got us ranked and won a bowl game, but we were never Boise State. There was a lot of excitement around Buffalo while he was building those teams, especially with what Hurley and Oats were doing with the basketball program at the same time. But we were still dealing with facilities and a budget that put us at a disadvantage compared to a lot of our peers.
Kansas is a different situation. You're competing against some pretty prominent programs in your conference, but your facilities are very good, your games are well attended, and you have fans who are passionate about the program. The resources and the expectations are different, so I don't think you can simply compare what Leipold did at Buffalo with what he's doing at Kansas.
The other big difference is that recruiting in 2015 isn't recruiting in 2026. Back then, you were recruiting high school players and trying to develop them into a team. Now, it feels like a lot of schools are looking for that one-and-done free-agent talent to come in and fill a hole. I'm not saying player development doesn't happen anymore, but I haven't seen much that makes me feel like it's still the foundation of the sport.
Honestly, the whole thing has soured me on college football to some extent. It's harder to tell whether a coach is really developing a program or just assembling a roster for the next season. And that's a big reason why I think this is a difficult comparison to make. Leipold showed at Buffalo that he could build a team under difficult circumstances. Whether he's doing the same thing at Kansas, or whether the current environment is changing what building a program even means, is a harder question to answer.
–
Perhaps the most interesting part of our original conversation had nothing to do with Leipold.
We disagreed about Turner Gill, and you argued that Kansas had deeper institutional problems that made it difficult for any coach to succeed. You questioned the university's repeated coaching changes and whether the athletic department had created an environment where a football program could actually be built. I don't necessarily disagree – I myself have complained many times on RCT basically blaming the basketball program and its big money donors for the state of KU football.
But, since 2021, Kansas has hired a new athletic director in Travis Goff, committed enormous resources to its football facilities, and made substantial financial investments in Leipold and his staff. Has Kansas done enough to address the institutional problems you identified five years ago? And if so, at what point does responsibility for the on-field results shift primarily to the coaching staff?
Yes, I think Kansas has done enough to address the institutional problems I was talking about in 2021. Travis Goff has brought a different level of commitment to the football program, and the investment in facilities, Leipold, and his staff is real. I do wonder whether, under the previous administration, Leipold would have gotten the chance to coach through this season after two consecutive 5-7 years.
I understand why you reached out to an old, retired Buffalo blogger when there are fans asking whether it's time to move on from Leipold. If this season ends with another sub-six-win record, I think that's a fair question. Three losing seasons in a row is a pattern you can't just ignore.
I've talked about the risk-reward calculation with a coach who's somewhere in the middle. You know Leipold can win. He's done it at Buffalo and Kansas. You also have reason to believe he isn't going to turn Kansas into a complete disaster. But what you don't know is whether he's the guy who can consistently win eight or nine games and occasionally put Kansas in a position to challenge for the conference. That's a pretty important distinction, particularly when you've invested as much as Kansas has.
And that's where the Turner Gill comparison gets interesting. Gill never really got the same opportunity to prove what he could do at Kansas. Maybe the university dodged a bullet by cutting bait when it did. But you can't actually know that. You can look at what happened afterward and convince yourself the decision was right, but that doesn't mean it was inevitable.
I think Kansas has done enough on the institutional side that the responsibility now has to shift more toward Leipold and his staff. That doesn't mean the athletic department has no responsibility, or that every rough season should cost a coach his job. But Leipold has had enough time, and he's been given enough support, that it's fair to ask what the program is going to be going forward.
At some point, you have to decide whether you're looking at a temporary downturn in a program that's being built or evidence that you've reached the ceiling with this coach. That's the hard part. Kansas shouldn't make a change just because it's frustrated, but it also shouldn't keep investing in the hope that things will eventually turn around if the results aren't there.
–
Here's something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately.
I'm not asking Kansas to become Alabama or Ohio State. That's unrealistic; this isn't CFB27. That said, given the financial investment in football, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect bowl appearances at least two out of every three years, an occasional top-10 season, and something approaching a .500 record against Kansas State over any given ten-year period.
Am I being unreasonable?
I think expecting a top-10 season as a regular standard is too much. There are probably six to eight programs you can pencil in as top-10 caliber pretty much every year, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for mistakes if that's where you expect to be.
I think Kansas should be aiming to become a borderline top-10-caliber program, with a season in that range once or twice a decade. Then, if the ball bounces your way, maybe you get that special season where everything comes together. The gap between being the ninth-best team in the country and being ranked 19th isn't necessarily all that big. A few games go differently, and suddenly you're having a very different conversation about your season.
Where I think your expectations are absolutely reasonable is bowl eligibility. There's no reason Kansas shouldn't be a bowl team nearly every year with the resources it's putting into football. That might mean giving up some of those marquee nonconference games and scheduling a few mid-majors you can pay to come to Lawrence. You should be able to pencil in three wins a season from those games and build from there.
And I say that as someone who watched Leipold build a winner at Buffalo with considerably fewer resources. If Buffalo were spending the kind of money Kansas is spending on football (or even a mid-major version of that), I'd expect a bowl game nearly every year. As it is, I think failing to make a bowl at least half the time over a ten-year stretch is borderline inexcusable, no matter who you are.
I'm not saying Kansas should win the conference every year or compete for a national championship. But with that level of investment, you should be able to build a program that gets to a bowl consistently, has the occasional special season, and gives its fans a reason to believe that the next step is possible. That's a reasonable return on the investment.
–
I don't entirely buy the suggestion that Kansas should be able to schedule three relatively easy nonconference victories every year. With the current scheduling environment, existing contracts, and the unpredictability of even supposedly inferior opponents (I see you, Coastal Carolina), that's not always practical. Also, I wouldn't want to imply that winning six games is a meaningful achievement simply because an athletic department strategically scheduled three likely wins.
As good as a Coastal Carolina can occasionally be, a decent-to-good team in your pond should be able to sink them 99% of the time. They're not old school Boise. Of your three non-conference games, two should be wins every year, and the third should be a win far more often than not.
–
I think there's a difference between building a bowl-caliber football program and building a schedule that makes bowl eligibility easier. That doesn't mean your larger point is wrong; I also believe and expect that KU should be making regular bowl game appearances.
But I can't have this conversation without discussing Kansas State.
2026 saw KU's 18th consecutive defeat in the Sunflower Showdown. Leipold is now 0-6 against K-State, and several of those losses have featured the same kinds of mistakes and missed opportunities we've discussed.
As a fellow college football fan, how much weight should an athletic director place on rivalry results when evaluating a head coach? Should persistent failure against your biggest rival matter independently of the overall record?
This is a hard one for me to answer because, when I was running Bull Run, we tried pretty hard to build that kind of energy around a conference opponent at Buffalo. But we just didn't have the history. We tried to generate some interest in games against UMass, Eastern Michigan, and Ohio, but those fan bases already had plenty of history and hatred tied up in other rivalries.
If Stony Brook ever made the jump from FCS to FBS and joined the MAC, maybe we'd finally get that kind of fun rivalry going. But it's hard to manufacture that history. It has to develop over time.
As for Kansas, I think rivalry results matter, but I have a hard time seeing them as completely separate from the overall record. If Leipold were winning nine games a year and just happened to struggle against Kansas State, I don't think the 0-6 record would carry nearly as much weight. You'd be frustrated, sure, but you'd also be winning a lot of football games.
Right now, though, those losses are salt in the wound. When you're already questioning whether the program is moving in the right direction, repeatedly losing to your biggest rival makes everything feel worse. And when the losses feature the same mistakes and missed opportunities, it starts to feel like more than just bad luck.
So I think rivalry results should absolutely be part of the evaluation, especially at a place where that rivalry means so much to the fans. But I wouldn't make them the deciding factor on their own. If you're winning consistently, you can probably survive a bad rivalry record. If you're not winning consistently, losing to your biggest rival just gives people one more reason to wonder whether something needs to change.
–
After the K-State game, I was in a frame of mind that I don't care if Leipold goes 1-11 next year, that one win better be K-State. And if he goes 11-1, that one loss better not be K-State. I think you're talking me down off the ledge, though. 18-straight against anybody is tough to take. I mean, can you imagine losing 18-straight to, I dunno, Toledo?
The closest parallel for us might be Ohio, and no, that would be painful. But… as someone who started following college football when Buffalo was at its worst I'd take the 11-1 and not even blink if the loss was Ohio.
–
Let's address the uncomfortable question.
Leipold deserves enormous credit for pulling Kansas football out of the wilderness. But we're now in his sixth season, and the trajectory since 2023 has been disappointing. At what point does a successful rebuild become a stalled program?
If you were Travis Goff, what specific improvements would you need to see over the remainder of 2026 and into 2027 to remain confident that Leipold is the right person to lead Kansas forward? And what would convince you that it might be time for a change?
I think four wins this year is the absolute minimum lifeline for another season. Kansas has two winnable games left against UCF and West Virginia, but beyond that, beating anyone else is going to be rough. Maybe they pull off an upset, but as far as I'm concerned, this season has already been a burned-down house. The question now is whether there's enough left to rebuild from.
If I were Travis Goff, I'd be calling Leipold into the office after the next loss and asking him a pretty simple question: "What changes are you going to make in the offseason to fix this?"
Leipold is a loyal coach, and I think that loyalty has helped him build programs in the past. But at some point, you have to be willing to make changes when things aren't working. You can't keep running the same operation, getting the same results, and telling everyone, "Aw, shucks, we'll just work even harder next year." That's not going to cut it anymore. I want to hear specific answers about what needs to change, whether that's the staff, the way the team prepares, or how the coaches handle games. And then I want to see those changes actually happen.
For me, that's really the dividing line between a stalled program and one that's going through a rough patch. A rough patch comes with a plan to get out of it. A stalled program just keeps telling you that next year will be different.
I'd give Leipold the rest of this season and all of 2027. That also gives Kansas a little more time to save money for a potential buyout rather than making an expensive decision in the heat of the moment. But next year would be bowl or bust. With the investment Kansas has made and the time Leipold has had, getting to a bowl should be the baseline, not the goal you're still hoping to reach.
There is one exception to that timeline, though. If another college or NFL team makes what looks like a questionable decision and suddenly a really good coach becomes available, Kansas should at least explore the opportunity. Maybe the Bills letting their coach go next year creates that kind of possibility. You don't want to pass up a chance to upgrade just because you've already decided to give Leipold one more season. But you also don't fire a coach just to go shopping without a clear idea of who you can get.
I don't think Leipold should be fired simply because the program has hit a rough stretch. He's earned the opportunity to show he can correct it. But he's also had enough time and support that he needs to demonstrate he can do more than build a program. He needs to show he can keep it moving forward. If Kansas can't get back to a bowl in 2027, I'd have a hard time making the case that he's still the right person to lead the program.
–
Finally, let's return to something you said in 2021.
You argued that Kansas had repeatedly made the mistake of expecting a new head coach to solve problems that extended well beyond the football field. You hoped the university had finally learned its lesson.
Five years later, are we in danger of making that same mistake by questioning Leipold's future? Or has Kansas now provided enough time, resources, and institutional support that it's fair to expect more than what we're getting?
In other words, what do you think Kansas fans are getting right about the current situation, and what are we getting wrong?
Every concern I had about Kansas having the leadership to make things work has pretty much evaporated. You're paying a coach millions a year and it will be three years of losing records once this season is done (in all likelihood).
At this point, I don't think any program, mid-major or power conference, should be sitting around saying to itself, "This is good enough." Not after this much time and this level of investment. At some point, you have to start seeing results.
So I don't think questioning Leipold means Kansas is repeating the mistakes of the past. It would be repeating those mistakes if the university made a change without understanding what went wrong or what it needed from the next coach. But holding Leipold accountable after this much time and investment isn't impatience. It's what you should expect from a program that says it wants to compete.
–
Kansas fans have spent a lot of time talking about how much better KU looks than it did before Leipold arrived. And that's true – just ask Texas and Oklahoma. But I'm interested in what measurable signs we can look for to determine whether the program is still improving, rather than just maintaining a higher floor. Kansas isn't the hopeless program it was under Beaty and Miles, but how do we determine whether it's still progressing?
When Leipold was at Buffalo, what convinced you that his program was actually improving? Was it simply winning games, or was it recruiting, player development, better execution, or something else?
It was the winning, which came from execution and coaching. The players were not nearly as dominant as those Jeff Quinn had at his disposal.
Two losing seasons when he got to Buffalo, followed by four winning seasons, including three bowls and a top 25 finish. And he did it with pretty much the same resources Jeff Quinn had at his disposal (but no Khalil Mack).
You guys almost had TCU yesterday – even in your losses you don't look awful and that reminds me of Leipold's first two seasons at Buffalo.
–
This concludes the interview.
–
Editor's Note: Tim is a college football fan the same as you and me. There's an interesting tension between Tim's last two observations. On one hand, he's telling us that the evidence of progress at Buffalo was winning. On the other, he's seeing something encouraging in KU's competitive losses.
However, I don't think he's contradicting himself. He's simply distinguishing the early signs of improvement from the results that ultimately demonstrate it.
But here's the problem: Leipold is in Year 6 at Kansas, not Year 2.
Nobody should diminish what Leipold accomplished in his first three seasons at Kansas. He took a program that was a national punchline and turned it into one capable of beating Texas, Oklahoma, and just about anybody else on any given Saturday.
But at some point, being better than David Beaty stops being the standard.
We spent most of the last fifteen years asking whether Kansas football could ever become respectable again. Leipold has answered that question.
Now, I'm asking whether respectable is all we're ever going to get.
My thanks to Tim Riordan for coming back to RCT and SBNation and sharing his perspective. It's always good to hear from someone who knows Leipold's coaching history and isn't quite as emotionally invested in eighteen consecutive losses to K-State as I apparently am.
RCJH
