Inside Kansas' rebuild with Lance Leipold & which programs could learn from it?
Until Saturday: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2024
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The University of Kansas football program reached its zenith in 2007 after recording its first 12-win season and an Orange Bowl win. However, that 2007 season would mark the last time KU football would win at least nine games for nearly two decades. In a 17-year drought that included two WINLESS seasons, five head coaching changes, and a fanbase who had been teased with promises of improvement - finally found it in head coach Lance Leipold, who guided the Jayhawks to nine wins last year. How did the 59-year-old head coach, who didn't earn his first HC gig until his 40s, take a program that had zero wins in 2020 to a top-25 finish in 2023? Coach Leipold explains. Later, Ari and Max Olson discuss the latter's story about this program builder. They also identify which teams from across the country could learn from Leipold's lessons.
Read Max's story:
https://theathletic.com/5318871/2024/03/07/lance-leipold-kansas-football-coach-career/
Vote Until Saturday's 'Best CFB Stadium' Bracket Challenge!:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_sREhl3ijSqHEQbdYL72lYXmP7draMSuHh0OgogWOz5WQkw/viewform
Time stamps:
- What was Kansas before Leipold? (1:30)
- Lance Leipold joins the show (4:15)
- Why Lawrence? (9:30)
- Internal lobbying; vision and building from within (13:00)
- The right AD? (16:00)
- Young up-and-coming coaching candidates vs experienced HC at lower levels (18:00)
- Success opening the door for other coaches at non-D-1 schools? (21:00)
- Navigating the new era of roster construction (23:00)
- Picking the a career you love (27:30)
- What advice would you give to a coach that going through what you went through? (30:15)
- Rebuilding vs restoring and selling (32:45)
- What programs are in the position Kansas was in/who could learn from Leipold? (42:00)
- Introducing Until Saturday's 'Best CFB Stadium' Bracket Challenge! w/ Jayna Bardahl (1:06:30)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | He's having a blinder. He's clipped the post. He's looking formidable. Then... |
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| 0:44.9 | for a quick pit stop in our pub gardens |
| 0:47.2 | or settle in together on the weekend |
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| 1:15.7 | Welcome back to the latest edition of Until Saturday. |
| 1:23.3 | I'm Ari Wasserman, joined by one of my best buds in the business, Max Olson, who wrote one of the best stories that's ever been written about Kansas, maybe in the history of the program. |
| 1:32.3 | And he talked to a coach, and it was about a coach in Lance Lypole, who has done something incredible in terms of the places he's built, both at Kansas and his past. |
| 1:35.8 | And luckily for us, we're going to have Lance on the show later on to talk about it. |
| 1:45.4 | But we're going to talk about the building of Kansas, but we're going to also discuss other programs, what they can learn from the build of Kansas, and come up with a few programs that we we might fit the ilk of that. So, Max, how are you doing today? I'm doing well, man. Thanks for, |
| 1:51.3 | having me on. Always a pleasure to see your smiling, shrinking face. Yeah, it feels good. It's, |
| 1:57.7 | shrinking. I love that. It's better than expanding. You are just glowing. You are glowing with health today, Ari. And I love to see it. It's shrinking. I love that. It's better than expanding. |
... |
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