Rivalry week has arrived, and with Missouri back in Lawrence for the first time in 21 years, Lance Leipold finds himself at a familiar but uncomfortable checkpoint.
Kansas football is undeniably better than it was when Leipold took over. That part of the story is settled.
The Jayhawks were 9-60 in the six years before his arrival, then climbed from 2-10 to 6-7 to 9-4 in his first three seasons. By the end of 2023, the turnaround was so dramatic that Stewart Mandel of The Athletic ranked Leipold the second-best coach in the country.
The new stadium had been announced, ground was broken, and it felt like Kansas football was finally moving toward something bigger.
But the momentum hasn’t kept rolling. Kansas opened the 2024 season ranked for the first time in 15 years, then stumbled to a 2-6 start before a late surge over ranked opponents pushed the Jayhawks to the brink of bowl eligibility.
Baylor ended that push with a 45-17 blowout. Kansas then dropped its final game of the 2025 season and fell out of bowl eligibility again.
Now in year six, Leipold’s tenure has delivered a clear upgrade - just not the kind that quiets every question. Kansas is still 5-10 against ranked opponents, with three of those wins coming in 2024 and only one on the road. Recruiting has also lagged behind the progress on the field; since Leipold arrived, Kansas has had the bottom-ranked combined high school and transfer recruiting class in the Big 12 more times, twice, than it has had one in the top half, once.
The biggest issue, though, has been the games that matter most to the fan base. The Sunflower Showdown losing streak was already at 12 when Leipold arrived.
It’s now 17 straight losses. Missouri also won the first meeting of the revived Border War, beating Kansas 42-31 in Columbia in 2025.
There have been chances for Kansas to make those rivalry losses easier to explain. The 47-27 defeat to a Kansas State team that won the Big 12 in 2022 fits that category.
The others do not. Kansas has lost two straight to Kansas State, in 2023 and 2024, with self-inflicted mistakes doing the damage.
It led 21-6 in Columbia last year and still lost by 11. Then came the 2025 Sunflower Showdown, when Kansas entered as a betting favorite and walked out of Lawrence with a 42-17 beating.
After that loss, Leipold didn’t hide how he felt.
“I’m embarrassed right now,” Leipold told the media after the loss in 2025. “We need to play better than that.
You’ll point out the win streak; I’m embarrassed we lost five because those are the five that I’ve been here for. I can’t change the past, but I can change the future.”
That’s the part of this era that remains unresolved. Leipold rebuilt the foundation, and in a real way, the job of lifting Kansas out of the ditch is done. What remains is the harder step: winning the games that define a program’s identity, cleaning up the close ones, and beating the rivals who show up on the calendar every year.
Friday night at the Booth gives Kansas another chance to do that. It could be the start of the next step for Leipold’s program. Or it could be another reminder that the climb has stalled.
In Other News...
Isaiah Marshall Just Sparked A Tough Kansas Offense Debate
Isaiah Marshalls first real test against high-level competition turned into a harsh lesson for Kansas, even as the quarterback found the end zone twice in the loss to Missouri. The Jayhawks were already dealing with a Missouri defense that kept landing punches, from two blocked field goals to enough disruption up front and in the middle of the field to tilt the afternoon toward the Tigers in a 38-21 result.
Marshalls stat line will draw attention, but the bigger concern for Kansas is how quickly the offense went from manageable to shaky when the game tightened. Missouri quarterback Austin Simmons threw for 292 yards and three touchdowns, Jamal Roberts added 125 yards and a score on the ground, and Kansas never found a steady answer once the Tigers began dictating the flow, leaving Lance Leipold and his staff with a tougher offensive conversation than they likely expected. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Leans Into Border War Tension With Provocative Missouri Message
The Border War is back on the college football calendar, and Kansas is leaning all the way into the old-school bitterness that still comes with Missouri week. With No. 23 Missouri set to face the Jayhawks, the program used a Civil War-themed hype video to stir the pot, tapping into the long memory behind a rivalry whose roots stretch well beyond football and into the conflict between the two states that dates to the Civil War era.
For Kansas fans, the matchup has never been just about the standings. The name alone carries the weight of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas and the Lawrence Massacre, and the latest promotional push made clear the school understands exactly what kind of game this is supposed to feel like. The video adds another layer of tension before kickoff, and it only sharpens the sense that this one is about more than a win or loss. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Faces A Painful Border War Problem That Keeps Getting Worse
The Border War has become a rougher watch for Kansas than anyone around the program would have liked, and Saturdays 38-21 loss in Columbia only added to the frustration. Missouri extended its streak in the rivalry to five straight, leaning on a cleaner, more physical performance while Kansas kept handing away chances in a game that was still there for the taking into the second half.
The Jayhawks had moments to settle in and answer, but the margin quickly widened once Missouri started turning those openings into points. Kansas has spent years trying to climb back into this series, yet the recent pattern is becoming harder to ignore, with each meeting seeming to reinforce how much work remains before the rivalry feels even again. [Read more 🡒]