27 years ago, he offered his buddy a job. Why a KU coach’s ‘wild story’ begins there
A few weeks ago, after Lance Leipold officially accepted the Kansas football coaching position, he called up Brian Borland to request he come along as the Jayhawks’ new defensive coordinator.
The significance of that moment wasn’t lost on Borland, especially considering the history of the two men from 27 years earlier.
“It’s a pretty wild story,” Borland said Tuesday with a smile.
Borland — nearly three decades ago — certainly never would have envisioned this path back to northeastern Kansas.
The backstory begins with Borland’s start as a football grinder. He has worked his way up through the ranks, which included an early stint as defensive coordinator at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas from 1991-93 — a time he affectionately describes now as “full-time job, part-time pay.”
Sometimes, he says, he’d let his mind wander then with KU just 16 miles up the road: Man, I wonder if I could coach at KU? I bet you I could, right? I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance.
Even then, though, he also was thinking about others who were trying to keep alive their own coaching dreams.
That included an old high school rival from Wisconsin. The friend had been a graduate assistant at Wisconsin, and he was looking to remain in the football coaching profession.
Borland, at that moment, wanted to do everything he could to make sure his buddy didn’t give up on his ultimate dream.
So he called up Lance Leipold to offer him a job at Baker.
“I know he was kinda struggling. Sometimes at that age and at those levels, you’re just trying to find stuff and you’re just trying to stay in it, and so that you don’t have to go be a vitamin salesman or whatever. You’re just trying to stay in the profession somehow,” Borland said. “So we had kind of a job where — I’m embarrassed to say it now — is, ‘We can pay you about this much money to come and basically take care of the stadium and clean out the locker room and do stuff and coach.’”
Leipold turned him down, eventually becoming a full-time assistant at Nebraska-Omaha. Borland kept on his own path, leading defenses at football’s lower levels while also teaching college classes and serving as head coach in sports like softball and track and field.
Neither man could have foreseen the rise that was next. Leipold and Borland later reunited as head coach and assistant coach at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2007. The two also made the move together to Buffalo with their same roles in 2015.
Now, they’ve advanced together to Kansas, where Borland is embracing the challenge of going against dynamic offenses in the Big 12.
“I am really humbled and could never envision myself in this situation quite honestly,” Borland said. “It’s my 37th fall, going in my 37th fall of coaching. When guys say they work themselves up through the ranks, I feel like I’ve worked myself up through the ranks of every level of football to get to this point.”
It’s a test that Leipold believes Borland is ready to confront. The KU coach describes Borland as “quiet” and “very humble” while also saying his defenses always tend to be fundamentally sound.
“I’ve always been impressed with Brian, how he goes through game preparation,” Leipold said. “Our second halves ... I think when you go back and look at some times when we’re playing good football, sometimes how well we play the second half in close football games. He is able to get a good read on things.”
Buffalo’s defense certainly improved under Borland’s leadership. The Bulls, who ranked 96th defensively in ESPN’s advanced SP+ rankings in 2015 when Borland took over, were 45th in that same statistic in 2019 and 47th in 2020.
KU, for reference, was 107th in SP+ defense last season out of 127 FBS programs.
Borland, more than anything, says he feels fortunate to be in Lawrence now. He’d made it into town just one time when coaching at Baker, saying the team used Memorial Stadium’s turf field for a practice once during a playoff run.
Back then, KU signified big-time football ... and also a dream that didn’t seem so realistic.
Now — for Borland — it’s become the latest chapter of a wild story that eventually brought him back to Kansas.
“As good fortune would have it, I find myself here, and I’m so excited about the opportunity,” Borland said. “I know I’m a lot closer to the end of my career than the beginning, so to be able to, quite honestly, hopefully finish it in a situation like this is ... man, I can’t tell you what it means to me. It means a lot.”
