This Jayhawks coach’s goal: ‘Make KU Kansas City’s hometown college football team’
Jake Schoonover has big aspirations ... and he’s not afraid to talk about them either.
Kansas’ first-year special teams coach has had success as an assistant at multiple stops — including Illinois State and Bowling Green — when recruiting the Kansas City area.
And now that he’s in Lawrence?
“I want to make KU Kansas City’s hometown college football team. Bar none,” Schoonover said. “If a kid in Kansas City grows up, wants to play big-time football, then KU is going to be one of the first things they think about. That’s what we want to make happen here.”
Schoonover isn’t naive. He knows this isn’t a goal that can simply be talked into existence, or that can be accomplished overnight.
Still, his previous experience tells him that recruiting in the area can be fruitful if done correctly.
“I’ll be honest: I benefited at the level I was at because a lot of kids that I feel like should have ended up at Kansas didn’t, and maybe slipped through the cracks, maybe got under-evaluated,” Schoonover said. “I recruited 24 kids out of the Missouri-Kansas area to Illinois State, and about half of them should have been Jayhawks.”
Schoonover is especially passionate about this topic because of his own history.
He grew up in Mound City, Missouri, just outside the KC metro area. He later played football for Missouri Western before starting to build ties with coaches in the region.
Schoonover also was nearby when former coach Mark Mangino took KU to a 2008 Orange Bowl win. He has the numbers committed to memory by now: Mangino had 38 total players from Kansas and Missouri on that roster and also 55 within a five-hour radius of Lawrence.
KU’s current roster has 20 guys from Kansas and Missouri.
“That’s not enough right now, and you see it,” Schoonover said. “The big thing we keep talking about here is, ‘We’ve got to change the culture. We’ve got to change the investment.’ Well, if you didn’t grow up knowing the brand and knowing what it means to play for KU, it’s harder to get invested as quickly.”
Schoonover often recalls a saying he heard from his coach Jerry Partridge at Missouri Western: “It takes two years to bleed the colors you’re playing for.”
To become fully devoted to a program, Schoonover believes one has to have planted roots there. And he says that’s much easier to cultivate when local talent is part of the mix.
“The more kids you have in that room that it’s really important for them to play at KU, the easier it is to blend it through the whole roster,” Schoonover said. “And so I think you see that, when it’s been successful here, that’s the recipe. And that’s what we’ve got to fix right now.”
For his part, new KU coach Lance Leipold also spoke to the importance of local recruiting in his introductory press conference last month. He labeled it as “extremely important,” before saying it needed to be KU’s “foundation and become the backbone of what we are.”
“Some of the programs in the Midwest, when you see what they do, they play a certain brand of football, and it’s physical, tough, disciplined football ... it’s usually a lot of their core people are right there in their backyard,” Leipold said. “And we plan to do that as well.”
Now, though, comes the challenge.
Rebuilding relationships with area coaches will take time. Schoonover is aware that previous KU coaching staffs have been in this spot before, promising to prioritize local recruits ahead of a period where they didn’t follow through as much as original words indicated.
Schoonover believes this can be overcome, partly with help from his past. He says the most important aspect is gaining trust, and he believes he has a start on that thanks to area coaches he’s already known for years.
One, he says, texts him often about the Kansas City Royals. Another talks to him frequently about golf.
A third, because of recent health issues, is on the nightly prayer list for Schoonover’s son, Jackson.
“It’s not just, ‘Hey, do you have a kid that we want, and can we get him, and how can you help us?’ That’s shallow. That doesn’t mean anything to coaches. You’re just another guy to them,” Schoonover said. “It’s true relationships, and, ‘Hey, how can we help each other?’ It’s not just us getting your players.”
Schoonover believes one specific outreach effort could help with that. KU’s coaches have begun a weekly “Chalk Talk” Zoom call for high school coaches, with Schoonover taking his turn on Wednesday night.
That constant interaction with coaches, Schoonover hopes, will help deepen the bond in years to come.
It’s here where Schoonover brings up a frequently used line by Royals general manager Dayton Moore — “Pitching is the currency of baseball” — and is ready to relate it to his own line of work.
Recruiting isn’t the currency of football, he says. Instead, it’s relationships.
“Relationships are the currency of success,“ Schoonover said, before cracking a smile. “I might trademark that too.”
Plenty of work remains ahead.
KU added six transfers from Buffalo last week, which is sure to limit the number of scholarships available for the 2021 class. And because of the timing of the coaching change in the spring, the Jayhawks staff will likely need to catch up to other programs when talking to 2022 prospects as well.
Schoonover says he often speaks with families about the importance of choosing the right college program. In essence, those parents — after raising their son for 17 or 18 years — are entrusting him to someone else.
“It takes time, relationships and trust for them to say, ‘Hey, you know what? Coach Leipold’s going take care of you at KU,’” Schoonover said. “’I know this place might have a better facility, this place might have a better record, but I just know you’ll get taken care of here.’”
Getting that buy-in from Kansas City and local families might not be a reality yet.
But Schoonover believes it can be done at KU.
“If we build that with these local programs, it’s going to happen,” Schoonover said of boosting local recruiting. “And there’s a track record that those kids can supply a program with a lot of great kids that will help build your brand.”
