Kansas football is red-hot on the recruiting trail, but Lance Leipold isn’t satisfied
Kansas football has undoubtedly improved quite a bit under coach Lance Leipold.
Last season, the Jayhawks (6-7, 3-6 Big 12) made their first bowl appearance in 14 years. It’s led to optimism around a program that hasn’t had much hope over the last decade-plus.
Winning and optimism have correlated with success on the recruiting trail for Kansas.
On Tuesday, KU landed a verbal commitment from three-star running back Harry Stewart. This is after the Jayhawks also got a verbal commitment from four-star cornerback Austin Alexander on Monday.
KU beat out multiple other Power Five schools for each player. Both represent some of the highest-ranked commitments of Leipold’s KU tenure.
“Changing how the program has been looked at is going to take time,” he said. “I think the improvement of our program … continues to build, and I think we’re finding ourselves in conversations with players that are being recruited by other schools that were maybe slightly different than they were our first two years.”
Leipold believes winning isn’t the only reason KU has landed highly rated prospects.
“One is obviously on the field, two is commitment (to the players) and maybe three is stability in staff and seeing things from our players and the experiences they are having,” Leipold said. “Our recruiting staff and assistant coaches have done a good job. I think we are (also) better in some areas of our approach; that is helping us.”
Like many programs, Kansas has enlisted the help of current players to help in recruiting. Leipold and his staff try to pair the current players with recruits that are most alike.
“We had student hosts that were seniors, and we’ve had some student hosts that have been (younger) — one that was on campus for 12 days or something,” he said. “We look for matches in a lot of different ways. But the cool thing about it to me is that everyone’s got a little different story and what their experience is — whether it be short-term, one semester, two weeks or multiple years.
“And I think that’s the nice thing, not just for the player but for his parents to see because that’s when they get the chance to sit down, have a meal and ask questions. … One of the more fulfilling things I get as a head coach is when I sit down with a family at the end of the visit and they talk about our staff and their experience.”
Leipold also tries to be transparent about the program when recruits come to town.
“There’s a lot of times in recruiting (when) people are telling everybody what they want,” Leipold said. “But, we’re talking about how this is (what) you’re going to get and the other things that we have. We have some very good things and we have some things that we have to improve upon. But we don’t hide from it.
“Many times, we look at the stability of our staff and what we’ve done because we talk about (how) we expect that staff to be there for the whole experience. Where (at) other places, It’s probably a guy that’s stopping in for a cup of coffee.”
That’s led to recent recruiting wins, but Leipold isn’t satisfied.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “We’ve got an important week coming up here and another one to follow before we get into the dead period.”
