Lance Leipold: Six things to know about the KU Jayhawks football coaching candidate
Kansas Athletics and new AD Travis Goff appear to be nearing the end of their search for a new football coach, with a new hire expected to be announced in the next week.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at one of the top rumored candidates for the position: Buffalo coach Lance Leipold (pronounced “LIE-pold”). Here are six facts about him.
1. He literally set an NCAA record for winning football games
Leipold began his head-coaching career at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater, going 100-6 over his first 106 games. That was the fewest games any college football coach has needed to get to 100 wins in his career, beating the previous mark set by Cornell’s Gil Dobie in 1921 (108 games).
Before leaving for Buffalo in 2015, Leipold went 109-6 overall at his alma mater Wisconsin-Whitewater, leading the Warhawks to six national championships in eight seasons.
2. His success hasn’t slowed at the FBS level
Leipold — after going 5-7 and 2-10 in his first two seasons at Buffalo — has won at least six games for four straight years. That’s included three consecutive bowl appearances, a 10-win campaign in 2018 and a 6-1 mark in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season when the Bulls picked up their first national ranking in school history.
3. The advanced numbers are impressed by his recent program-building (even if it took a little while)
The year before Leipold took over at Buffalo — in 2014 — the Bulls ranked 95th in Bill Connelly’s tempo- and opponent-adjusted SP+ rankings (KU, to compare, was 102nd that year).
Here’s how Leipold’s team progressed afterward in SP+, compared to KU over the same period.
| Buffalo | KU | |
| 2015 | 103 | 125 |
| 2016 | 124 | 119 |
| 2017 | 105 | 114 |
| 2018 | 82 | 100 |
| 2019 | 71 | 104 |
| 2020 | 48 | 121 |
Connelly wrote this about Leipold in his 2021 MAC East preview for ESPN in January: “After winning six Division III national titles at Wisconsin-Whitewater, Leipold took the leap to FBS, and after a few years of building a foundation, the Bulls have ignited.”
4. His defensive coordinator at Buffalo has previous ties to the state of Kansas
Brian Borland, who has been Leipold’s defensive coordinator at both Wisconsin-Whitewater and Buffalo, previously spent three years as defensive coordinator (from 1991-93) at NAIA school Baker University in Baldwin City. Borland even told USA Today that — when Leipold was looking for an assistant job early in his career — he tried to convince him to come to Baker.
“I called Lance up and offered him that job of basically working with peanuts and cleaning toilets and the locker room,” Borland told USA Today. “Luckily something else came up and he didn’t have to do that, but that’s just kind of funny how it goes.”
5. He interviewed for the Illinois job a few months ago
Leipold was one of the finalists for Illinois’ coaching vacancy earlier this offseason, with Sports Illustrated reporting then that he met with Illini AD Josh Whitman in Buffalo for an in-person interview. Illinois instead went with Bret Bielema, who previously coached at both Wisconsin and Arkansas.
Football Scoop also reported that Leipold was interested in Vanderbilt’s open coaching position in December before the Commodores hired Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea.
6. His plan for success isn’t ‘magic’
Leipold, in an interview with Buffalo Athletics, was asked shortly after he was hired how he planned to translate his success in Div. III to the FBS level.
His answer reflected some of his coaching beliefs.
“There’s not a magic recipe anybody has, or they’d be selling it for lots of money,” Leipold said then. “It goes back to evaluation and recruiting and development of players. ... We’re going to focus on the process of getting a little bit better in this program each and every day.”
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
