There’s been perhaps no school in the country who has had worse luck hiring a head coach than the Kansas football program.
KU has hired five different head coaches dating back to 2010 when the school fired Orange Bowl winning head coach Mark Mangino. It’s been a carousel of calamity with each of those coaches offering their own set of frustrations for a Jayhawk fanbase longing for stability.
In 2021, they believed their concerns had been answered when Kansas Athletics Director Travis Goff hired Lance Leipold to be the next head coach of KU football. Leipold had a history of program building at Wisconsin-Whitewater and Buffalo, and hopes were high he could do the same at KU – and he did.
By the end of year three, Leipold had guided Kansas to back-to-back bowl games, a bowl win, and ended multiple, horrid losing streaks – some of which had plagued the program for decades.
But now in year six, with just one winning season to his name and his program staring down the barrel of another losing season after falling to 0-6 versus in-state rival Kansas State and 0-2 versus Missouri, it’s become clear that Leipold has reached his ceiling as head coach at Kansas.
Leipold has failed to generate the sustained success he’s been entrusted to bring this program, and it now forces difficult conversations and decisions to be made for the future of this program.
Financial Challenges
It’s no secret that Kansas is in a financial hole right now due to the ongoing construction of the football stadium and Gateway District project. It’s approximately an $800 million undertaking that’s required a lot of resources and investments from both KU Athletics and KU donors.
KU is also faced with the financial challenges that many schools are currently facing when it comes to revenue sharing and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) funding. Simply put, they’re stretched thin right now.
That makes it difficult to imagine a scenario in which Goff would be able to reasonably raise the funds to buy out the remainder of Leipold’s contract following the conclusion of the 2026 season should he decide it’s best to move on.
After the most recent contract extension Leipold received in early 2024 which spans through the 2029 season, his buyout stands at nearly $18 million if KU were to fire him without cause after Dec. 1 of this year. That amount would be paid out monthly over the course of a year (approximately $1.5 million per month).
Not to mention, KU would be responsible for paying out Leipold’s assistants and paying a new coaching staff to come in and take over.
However, the longer Leipold remains, the more likely KU is to see declining ticket sales and revenue for football until a change is made.
So, unless a donor or donors step up to cover the cost of the buyout(s) – which is unlikely to the donor fatigue that many are experiencing with NIL and the Gateway District project – or Leipold and KU come to a mutually parting of ways that includes a lesser buyout, the Jayhawks may be stuck for the foreseeable future.
The Ghosts of Coaches Past
Many KU fans have expressed their concern for starting over, given where the program was prior to Leipold’s arrival – and that’s an issue of itself.
Leipold may be good enough as a coach to keep KU from being a complete embarrassment like they were before, but he’s not good enough to get them over the hump to become a consistent, winning football team.
It’s understandable to some degree. Being a Kansas football fan means having a lot of scar tissue from being burned time and time again by different head coaches over the years.
However, KU can’t afford to live in the past when it comes to deciding what’s best for the future.
Sure, there’s a chance that if they move on from Leipold, they may not get the next hire right. But if you look at Goff’s track record of coaching hires during his time at KU, those have been nearly spot on in every sport.
The next coach would also be coming into a pretty favorable environment with a new stadium, a first-class locker room, and state-of-the-art training facilities. Not to mention, they’d have the backing of an athletics department that’s clearly dedicated to making KU football successful.
You can argue that Leipold was the right hire for Kansas at the time, but he no longer appears to be the right man for the program today. And KU cannot let the ghosts of coaches past haunt them into avoiding the difficult steps required to turn this program around.
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