Kansas’ latest rivalry loss has Lance Leipold staring at an ugly number: 0-7 against the Jayhawks’ biggest opponents since taking over the program.
Missouri’s 38-21 win in the Border Showdown pushed Leipold to 0-7 in rivalry games at Kansas, with five of those losses coming against Kansas State and two against Missouri. For a fan base that has spent years waiting for a breakthrough in those matchups, that record has become the loudest criticism of an otherwise dramatic turnaround.
Leipold inherited a team that finished 0-9 in 2020 and turned it into a 9-4 squad two seasons later. Kansas has not kept that pace - the Jayhawks have posted back-to-back 5-7 seasons since 2023 - but the program is still far removed from the bleak stretches of the 2010s.
Even so, not every fan is interested in the bigger picture.
“Lance. At some point, you need to win a football game that matters,” one Kansas fan wrote on X in a post that drew nearly 200 likes in two hours.
There’s plenty Leipold can point to, and it’s not a short list. Kansas beat No.
12 Oklahoma and UNLV in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in 2023, then followed that with wins over No. 18 Iowa State, No.
17 BYU and No. 23 Colorado in 2024.
None of that changes the fact that the rivalry losses keep piling up, and in Lawrence, that has become a major problem.
The expectations have shifted, too. After a nine-win season and an $800 million fan experience renovation, simply scraping together more than two wins is no longer enough to satisfy the people paying attention. The pressure is even heavier at a school where basketball success has long raised the standard for everything else.
That leaves Kansas with a difficult question: what comes next?
Leipold’s 2024 extension pays him more than $7 million a year, which places him 36th nationally and fourth in the Big 12. If Kansas were to move on without cause, the school would owe him nearly $23 million in buyout money, a costly hurdle that sits on top of the stadium renovation spending.
The schedule ahead does offer more chances, but not many easy ones. Kansas heads to London next week to face Arizona State in the Union Jack Classic.
Right now, No. 15 BYU and No.
20 Utah are the only AP Top 25 teams left on the Jayhawks’ schedule. Kansas also has a trip to Manhattan still ahead for another crack at Kansas State in the Sunflower Showdown, a game the Jayhawks have not won since 2008.
For a fan base that seems ready to demand more, the path is clear enough. Kansas needs something close to the 2023 surge again, and it probably needs to beat Kansas State, too.
The Jayhawks can still reach 10 wins this season. But for some, there were only two games that truly had to be won, and one of them is already gone.
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The part Kansas will keep circling back to is how the offense unraveled after halftime, because the margin for error disappeared almost immediately. Missouri linebacker Robert Woodyard Jr. was at the center of some of the biggest momentum swings, and with Austin Simmons carving up the Jayhawks for 292 yards and three scores while Jamal Roberts added a big rushing day, Kansas was left staring at a familiar question about how much pressure Marshall should carry right now. [Read more 🡒]
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Kansas Let One Border War Bright Spot Get Buried By Bigger Problems
Kansas had a chance to make the Border War feel more competitive for stretches, and one of the biggest reasons it stayed within reach was a jolt from the special teams. On a day when the offense and defense both had too many rough edges in a 38-21 home loss to Missouri, the Jayhawks still managed to manufacture one of the game's cleanest bright spots with a blocked field goal turning into points the other way.
Even so, the good moments kept getting swallowed up by bigger problems, especially the mistakes that piled up on offense and left Kansas chasing the game. The evaluation from the loss points to issues across the board - turnovers, inconsistency, uneven execution and coaching decisions that never quite steadied things - and that left the Jayhawks with more frustration than momentum after a rivalry game they wanted to own at home. [Read more 🡒]