Morning report 2024-07-02

March 7 2024...
The Athletic - Max Olson: How Lance Leipold became college football’s most fearless program builder

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Lance Leipold was sitting in a squad car at 3 a.m. on a Monday in 1987 when it hit him.

He’d recently graduated from Wisconsin-Whitewater and was a part-time cop in his hometown of Jefferson, Wisc. Leipold once dreamed of a career in the Secret Service or FBI, but he didn’t want to go to law school. During the day, he worked at a group home for delinquent boys in Dousman. He was also in the police academy, taking his state exams and filling in on shifts. Sometimes he’d work a parade or chaperone a dance. Often, it was the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift.

Jefferson, a town of 6,000, didn’t have much of a crime problem. On that particular Sunday night turned Monday morning, Leipold hadn’t seen a car drive by in two hours. After a few months on the job, the 22-year-old former quarterback was starting to wonder where he fit in the real world.

“I thought I went to college not to work third shift,” he said. “Eventually, you’re kinda at that point where you’re like, ‘OK, what am I doing? Where am I going?’”

When the sun rose and his shift ended, Leipold didn’t go home to sleep in his parents’ basement. He drove to Whitewater and picked up an application for grad school. He was ready to get serious about coaching.

Over the ensuing 37 years, Leipold has established himself as one of the greatest builders in college football. He created a D-III powerhouse at UW-Whitewater. He had Buffalo playing for MAC titles by Year 4. Now he’s proving himself all over again at Kansas, which won nine games and a bowl in 2023, its first winning season and postseason victory since 2008.

But this isn’t just the new standard for Kansas. It’s the start of something special.

How does Leipold do it?

“What he does for a football program and a school, it’s really sort of amazing, right?” said former Whitewater quarterback Matt Behrendt. “He takes these broken-down programs and builds them up from literally nothing and turns them into schools that actually compete.”

Two days before the 1994 Rose Bowl, Leipold sat in a Wisconsin staff meeting as coaches put the finishing touches on its plan for UCLA. Leipold remembers Barry Alvarez turned to running backs coach Jim Hueber with a question.

“Hey Huebs, did you see Pat Behrns got the Nebraska-Omaha job? That could be a good job.”

Hueber knew Behrns well. In fact, he’d already instructed Leipold to update his resume. Hueber told Alvarez he was trying to get Leipold a job there.

“Barry goes, ‘We’ll call him right after this meeting,’” Leipold recalled. “And Barry did.”

When they got Leipold on a call with Behrns, Alvarez jotted down advice on a message note and passed it to him: TELL HIM YOU’LL WORK YOUR ASS OFF.

Leipold was a 30-year-old graduate assistant, ready for the next step. He’d coached three years at Whitewater and one season at Doane College in Crete, Neb., but he found out how little he knew about football when he joined the Badgers in 1991. Leipold learned under a staff loaded with future head coaches in Brad Childress, Dan McCarney, Bill Callahan, Jay Norvell and Rob Ianello that led a turnaround from 1-10 to 10-1-1 in four years.

“If you weren’t a really good worker and you weren’t passionate about it, if you weren’t a grinder, you were going to get exposed,” Ianello said.

Armed with that invaluable education, Leipold moved to Omaha and helped Behrns build a winner at the Division II level. The Mavericks went 1-10 and then 3-8 before pulling off the leap to 10-2 in 1996.

“Those first three years at Omaha were my most rewarding,” Leipold said. “Watching it be as bad as it was and watching it steadily get better, watching the kids get better, you felt like you made a difference.”

Behrns was a hard-nosed coach with straightforward ideas on culture: Do the simple things right, do them consistently and don’t make excuses. Be professional, not flashy. His way ultimately won seven conference titles.

Leipold asked Alvarez what he needed to do to earn an assistant job at Wisconsin. His old boss’ advice: Keep moving up. But Leipold ended up staying at UNO for seven years. The program and his job kept getting better. He met his wife, Kelly, there and took her to an Iowa Barnstormers arena football game for their first date.

As he approached 40, Leipold started to fear he was stuck. His peers were leaving for better jobs. His mentors were in the NFL. Was it time to move up?

When Leipold heard about an open recruiting position at Nebraska, he went for it. He got on Frank Solich’s staff as an administrative assistant before the 2001 season. He organized videotapes, visits and camps and learned to better appreciate the support staff side of the operation. Leipold also learned important lessons about alignment. He had a front-row seat for the end of the Solich era.

“Watching Frank get fired after nine wins, I was like, maybe at the D-II, D-III level it’s a little bit more … sane?” Leipold said.

Leipold actually helped salvage Nebraska’s tumultuous coaching search by calling Bill Callahan to gauge his interest. Not long after the hire, Nebraska athletic director Steve Pederson stopped by his office. Leipold was expecting a thank-you.

“Here I thought he was gonna say something nice,” Leipold said. “He goes, ‘Hey Lance, I need you to go in Bill’s office and wipe everything down and dust it. I don’t think anybody has gone in there and cleaned it up since Frank vacated it.’

“I went to his (director of football operations) and said, ‘He can kiss my ass.’ I knew then that I had to get out of there.”

Behrns took him back as Nebraska-Omaha’s offensive coordinator, and they won three more league titles together. Leipold started believing he was ready for a head job. He interviewed at schools like Upper Iowa, Northern State and Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Afterward, he’d ask for a copy of the interview questions so he’d be better in his next one.

In the summer of 2006, Leipold learned that his former coach Bob Berezowitz was retiring from Wisconsin-Whitewater at the end of the year. He reached out to longtime donor David Kachel, who advised him to get to know Paul Plinske. The 36-year-old athletic director agreed to a sit-down.

They met at Hi-Way Harry’s in Johnson Creek, Wisc., a restaurant 20 miles north of Whitewater, and talked for four hours about their families, their ambitions, building culture and sustaining success. What stood out to Plinske was how much Leipold had bettered himself by moving away and learning from winners. He had a bold vision for Whitewater. The AD walked away from their meal convinced he’d found his next head coach.

“He believed in something bigger than we could even imagine,” Plinske said.

Lance Leipold was not supposed to be the next head coach of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Stan Zweifel was.

The 16-year staffer was the internal candidate everyone expected to land the job. Leipold was reminded of that on a daily basis in his first year. So was Plinske.

How unpopular was the hire? Plinske’s Lexus was vandalized on three occasions. Leipold’s car was keyed. And then stranger things occurred. Hoses that watered the fields were cut. Pads on sleds were slashed. Two dozen helmets disappeared. Some unhappy high school coaches told Leipold to never contact them again. Whitewater had reached back-to-back Division III national title games before Leipold arrived. They had 23 seniors returning for 2007. Players didn’t want change.

“I remember at our first spring practice, Coach Leipold was going nuts trying to get people to quit walking around and run from drill to drill,” linebacker Jace Rindahl said. “I remember thinking, ‘What the heck is going on?’”

Leipold needed to win big to justify his presence. He admits much of Year 1 was a miserable experience. Whitewater lost to D-II St. Cloud State in Leipold’s second game. Two weeks later, it fell behind 28-10 against UW-La Crosse.

“Well, this is gonna get ugly,” Leipold told himself.

And then it all turned. The Warhawks scored 25 in the fourth quarter to win. They went 14-1. Running back Justin Beaver broke the D-III rushing record and won the Gagliardi Trophy. They won their first-ever national championship by snapping Mount Union’s 37-game win streak. Leipold remembers Plinske’s headlights were smashed when they returned home.

“The quote ‘Success is the best revenge’ cannot be any truer,” Plinske said.

Leipold won them all over by turning Whitewater into one of college football’s most dominant programs in his eight years in charge: 106 wins, six losses, six national titles. When he won three in a row from 2009 to 2011, people started calling it a dynasty. They built it with no scholarships, no redshirts and almost no recruiting budget. Matt Behrendt, one of Leipold’s star quarterbacks, graduated with $30,000 in student loan debt.

“If you go there, you go there for a reason,” Behrendt said. “You go there to push yourself. The first thing they say is it’s not gonna be easy at all.”

At Whitewater, they preached daily improvement and cultivated a highly competitive environment. Behrendt remembers many freshmen leaving in the first week of training camp. The roster was cut down to 100 by the end of camp. “It was a privilege to make the team,” said Brian Borland, Leipold’s longtime defensive coordinator. There was one standard, one way of doing things, and Rindahl says that applied to all 100 without favoritism.

“Guys that were late or didn’t show up to meetings, we assumed they quit,” former assistant Nelson Edmonds said, “so their lockers were cleaned out and their locks were cut.”

On these tight-knit teams, seniors helped teach freshmen the playbook and culture. During defensive lineman Loussaint Minett’s first training camp, senior Luke Hibner would pull him aside during breaks.

“We’d sit there for an hour and he’d coach me on the plays,” Minett said. “He was like, ‘Lou, you need to learn this. I know you’re tired, but I need you to learn this.’”

Nearly every season ended the same way: Whitewater vs. Mount Union in the Stagg Bowl in Salem, Va. Leipold faced Larry Kehres, the coach with the highest winning percentage (.929) in college football history, in five consecutive national title games. Each one was an epic bout between teams that respected and hated each other. Leipold won four of them.

After every Stagg Bowl, Plinske assumed Leipold was ready for bigger and better. The AD would ask what he needed to stay. Leipold would procure a list of eight to 10 ideas, always focused on players and staff. It was never about his salary, which eventually climbed to $110,000. Whitewater had razed excellent facilities. Leipold constantly pushed them to go further. That meant everything from Nike uniforms to better irrigation for the practice fields. “He was always one step ahead,” Plinske said. Leipold proved gifted at selling his bosses and donors on the importance of elevating the football program to elevate the institution.

“All that success, all the winning, all the accolades — he never really talked about it,” said Rindahl, who’s now the head coach at Whitewater. “He never raved too much about it. He was always looking for ways to improve.”

“I know that’s why we kept winning at Whitewater,” Leipold said. “Not a doubt in my mind. I didn’t sit there and talk about how great we were all day.”

Did he enjoy the wins enough? Definitely not. The pressure to not let it slip was more self-induced than anything. But when you get on a 46-game win streak, that’s unavoidable. Whitewater was the preseason No. 1 again entering 2012 but went 7-3 and missed the playoffs. Leipold was disappointed but strangely relieved. He chuckles as he recalls an article that described the season as “disastrous.”

“I said, ‘OK, now it’s gonna get back to normal,’” Leipold said.

Instead, Whitewater became more dangerous than ever. Leipold brought in Andy Kotelnicki and a new offensive staff for 2013, and they rolled to a 15-0 season and a 52-14 blowout of Mount Union. Their team leaders all came back in 2014 for another perfect season.

When Leipold reached 100 wins faster than any coach in NCAA history that year, players dumped water on him to celebrate.

“Of course, he got pissed and was saying, ‘This is just a regular game!’” Behrendt said. “It was classic Lance. That’s the kind of guy he is. It’s not about him. It’s about the team.”

He won his last 32 games at Whitewater. He could’ve stayed at his alma mater forever. Forrest Perkins led the program for 29 seasons. Berezowitz lasted 21 years. Why leave?

“Because people thought that Whitewater was set up to be successful,” Leipold said. “I got the itch to take over a program, an upstart, a down program. Maybe I had to prove it to other people. More importantly, I wanted to prove it to myself.”

Leipold accepted the Buffalo job during Whitewater’s playoff run to its sixth national title. He sent a trusted ally, Rob Ianello, to New York to begin the transition. During his first day at Buffalo, Ianello called to check in.

“Hey, when you were here, did they ever show you the locker room?” Ianello asked.

“No, I guess they didn’t,” Leipold remembers answering. “Why?”

“Oh. Did they show you the weight room?”

“No. How is it?”

“Yeah, not too good,” Ianello said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do here.”

Mentors told Leipold to not take the job, nervous it was a dead end with its lack of resources and tradition. Ianello, a former MAC head coach at Akron, saw the worst facilities in the conference and a program that felt “stalled.” Borland called it “broken.” Leipold had his eye on Ohio from the start. Solich ran the MAC’s most consistent program by playing fundamentally sound, tough football. That’s what Buffalo needed to become. Getting there took several humbling years.

“We had to really start over,” tight ends coach Alan Hensell said.

The buy-in they were accustomed to at Whitewater was hard-earned. The Bulls got off to a 5-4 start in 2015 but closed with three consecutive losses. In their second year, they slid to 2-10. “We had a lot of growing pains,” Leipold said. Kotelnicki’s offense ranked last in the league in scoring. Borland oversaw the worst run defense in school history. Linebacker Matt Otwinowski, a freshman that year, said the team felt divided.

He remembers one of Leipold’s favorite sayings: Leave it better than you found it. The head coach urged players to take pride in that mission. Otwinowski saw young players buying what Leipold was selling and older players who were checked-out and eager to leave.

For Leipold, the lesson learned was the necessity of recruiting passionate players. Is football important to them? Are they playing at Buffalo or for Buffalo? “Fit” became more about a player’s mentality, motivation and competitiveness.

“At Buffalo, we always said we were the land of misfit toys,” linebackers coach Chris Simpson said. “The guys we had, we had them because they were too this or too that. Too short, too light, too slow — they were all too something. They had a square wheel somewhere, but we just kept smoothing out that wheel and eventually that thing ran pretty good.”

As Leipold put it, “I can’t tell you we passed the eyeball test in pregame warmups.”

Safety Joey Banks was a few inches too short but an All-MAC performer. He came from City College of San Francisco and didn’t know what he was getting into. “I actually didn’t go out there with a real coat, just sweatshirts,” Banks said. “People were looking at me crazy like, ‘Dude, do you know there’s blizzards out here?’” He struggled to adjust and almost transferred. He’s glad he didn’t.

“All of these little things we did, if you just continue to do them, the positive effects and outcomes just compounded,” Banks said. “Guys started to notice that.”

There were promising signs in 2017. Buffalo played Minnesota close and beat Lane Kiffin’s 11-win Florida Atlantic team. The Bulls took defending MAC champ Western Michigan to seven overtimes in the longest and highest-scoring game in FBS history at the time. That 71-68 loss was a turning point. Players were exhausted and reduced to tears, but they grew closer. Leipold knows he should’ve gone for two earlier but tried to send a message.

“I wanted to show the guys I believed in them to go toe-to-toe with a team that went to the Cotton Bowl,” he said. “We were gonna keep going.”

The Bulls closed with three straight wins and upset Solich’s Ohio team to finish 6-6 but weren’t selected for a bowl game, a snub that helped fuel them. They broke through with a 10-win season in 2018, the best in school history, and played in the MAC title game two years after going 2-10.

Leipold battled year after year to improve the program’s infrastructure while working for four different ADs. A 92,000-square-foot indoor facility opened in 2019, as did a new fueling station and players lounge. The locker room was renovated in 2020. As soon as one project was almost completed, Leipold looked to launch the next one.

“I don’t think there’s an area in the facility that he didn’t touch and improve somehow in six years there,” Borland said.

Kotelnicki chuckled as he recalled Leipold fighting for an equipment truck during his first season. Buffalo was renting a box truck to transport gear to games. When Bowling Green’s much larger truck pulled up to their stadium, the head coach took a photo and brought it to the administration. “I go, ‘What do you think our players think of this?’” Leipold said. “‘How do you think they feel walking into the stadium on game day when we’ve got this little Penske truck and they’ve got a semi?’”

“Most coaches would be like, whatever, not going to waste my time arguing about that,” Kotelnicki said. “Those little battles, he fights them.”

After some initial resistance, Buffalo got a semi for Year 2. Leipold proudly says they saved money with it, too.

“He once told me, ‘My job is to make sure that every year, these players feel the growth of what’s going on,’” assistant Brad McCaslin said. “Something is coming back to them; they’re not just giving. Every year, there’s something different and better. If we can do that, we’re going to keep people connected to this and giving everything they’ve got.”

Leipold reached another MAC title game in 2020 and won 30 games over his last four seasons, more than any team in the league. He left it better than he found it.

“Lance does a great job of building from the ground, from a vacant lot, from nothing,” Banks said. “He knows how to put pieces together. He makes it work. It’s not the fanciest. You’re not gonna get all the lights and cameras and all this s–. But you’re gonna get something that works, something that can be duplicated.”

“I don’t think there’s an area in the facility that he didn’t touch and improve somehow in six years there,” Borland said.

Kotelnicki chuckled as he recalled Leipold fighting for an equipment truck during his first season. Buffalo was renting a box truck to transport gear to games. When Bowling Green’s much larger truck pulled up to their stadium, the head coach took a photo and brought it to the administration. “I go, ‘What do you think our players think of this?’” Leipold said. “‘How do you think they feel walking into the stadium on game day when we’ve got this little Penske truck and they’ve got a semi?’”

“Most coaches would be like, whatever, not going to waste my time arguing about that,” Kotelnicki said. “Those little battles, he fights them.”

After some initial resistance, Buffalo got a semi for Year 2. Leipold proudly says they saved money with it, too.

“He once told me, ‘My job is to make sure that every year, these players feel the growth of what’s going on,’” assistant Brad McCaslin said. “Something is coming back to them; they’re not just giving. Every year, there’s something different and better. If we can do that, we’re going to keep people connected to this and giving everything they’ve got.”

Leipold reached another MAC title game in 2020 and won 30 games over his last four seasons, more than any team in the league. He left it better than he found it.

“Lance does a great job of building from the ground, from a vacant lot, from nothing,” Banks said. “He knows how to put pieces together. He makes it work. It’s not the fanciest. You’re not gonna get all the lights and cameras and all this s–. But you’re gonna get something that works, something that can be duplicated.”

During Leipold’s first year at Kansas, director of sports performance Matt Gildersleeve observed a concerning trend.

Players were sloppier during practices inside Memorial Stadium than on the practice fields. Gildersleeve wanted to understand why Kansas loses. To him, it looked like performance anxiety.

“Failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure,” Gildersleeve said. “Something bad is gonna happen. Bad things happen in this stadium. Here we go again.”

Leipold took over at an unusual time, at the end of April 2021, with four months to prepare a team to play. Linebacker Rich Miller, one of six Buffalo transfers, was fascinated by the challenge.

“They didn’t know how to win,” Miller said. “They didn’t know what it felt like to win. It was weird, because they didn’t know what they needed to work on or what they needed to be to win.”

Kansas lost 99 games, more than any other FBS program, in the decade before Leipold arrived. Buy-in wasn’t as hard-earned as expected. Players were tired of losing.

They were 1-5 in Year 1 when Oklahoma came to town. The Jayhawks opened with a nine-minute touchdown drive and led 10-0 at halftime. Kansas’ administration opened the stadium gates — no ticket required — and urged fans to fill the stands. Caleb Williams and the No. 3 Sooners eventually pulled away for a 35-23 win.

When Leipold walked into Johnny’s Tavern for his radio show days later, fans gave a standing ovation. He was reminded of how starving people were for hope. But also, truthfully, he was pissed. His standard was much higher than moral victories.

Three weeks later: Kansas 57, Texas 56. The shocking overtime win in Austin was all the proof his team needed to start believing.

In Year 2, the Jayhawks got the college football world’s attention with a 5-0 start, a Top 25 ranking, sold-out home games, a “College GameDay” visit and their first bowl game in 14 years. “Some people on our team were surprised,” Miller said. “Not gonna lie, they were like, ‘Wow, we’re doing it.’” Simpson has worked with Leipold for 10 years. He’s seen it all before.

“Early on, the coaches after the game say, ‘Oh you guys are doing such a great job, just keep going, you guys are doing the right things.’ They almost pat you on the back,” he said. “The next year, they beat you but you lose by a little. Now when you walk across the field, they’re kinda looking at you sideways like, These guys might be a problem. And then the next year, now maybe you win by a little. Now they’re pissed. Now they’re like, ‘We just lost to Kansas.’ And then you become the team to beat.

“I’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean? Lose by a lot, lose by a little, win by a little, hopefully win by a lot. If we can just keep it day by day — it’s not easy, it never is — that’s the process.”

Kansas took that next step in 2023. After a 4-0 start, quarterback Jalon Daniels went down with a season-ending back injury. Senior backup Jason Bean stepped up and guided five more wins. This time, when undefeated No. 6 Oklahoma came to town, the Jayhawks kept fighting despite bad weather and bad mistakes and pulled off a last-minute upset.

“You know what? It’s probably time for me to start talking about how proud I am of how far this program has come,” Leipold said afterward. “It really has — in a short time.”

Kansas rose as high as No. 16 in the College Football Playoff rankings and finished No. 23 in the AP poll after defeating UNLV in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl. Three losses came down to one-score margins.

Good coaching, improving players, more wins. Simple enough, right? Not for Leipold. This rebuild is something different from his vantage point. It’s a daily battle to forever change Kansas, pushing a basketball school led by a young, ambitious athletic director to think differently. Travis Goff convinced Leipold that Kansas was serious about finally investing in football after 12 consecutive losing seasons. He’s holding them to that promise every day.

Leipold isn’t a play caller. He doesn’t get involved with the game plan. He trusts the coaches and staffers in his organization and empowers them to do their job, which they love. Leipold focuses his energy on fighting the good fight, paying extreme attention to the details, always determined to improve the student-athlete experience. “Those are my games,” he says. If you watch Leipold on the sideline on Saturdays, he’s constantly working the officials, competing for every call. The weekdays aren’t so different.

Leipold’s obsession with improvement is what Kansas needs if it wants a relevant football program in the Big 12.

“He’s at his best when he’s strained and when he’s challenged and when he’s got to tackle the next thing,” Goff said. “What’s the next hill? What’s the next mountain? And sometimes, he just creates them on his own.”

They might not get why he’s fighting for changes like morning practices or better plates and silverware, but they will. How does he strike the proper balance of knowing how hard to push?

“I don’t,” Leipold said. “I’m just pissed all the time. I’m probably slightly abrasive, unfortunately, behind the scenes. I can wear out people that way, probably.”

But look where it got them. If you took away the logos, tight end Mason Fairchild said, today’s Kansas program would be unrecognizable compared to the one he joined in 2019.

“I think now people can kinda stop viewing us as the doormat of college football,” running back Devin Neal said, “and start viewing us more as a really competitive football team.”

The renovation of Memorial Stadium, a transformative $448 million endeavor, is underway. An expanded football ops building, part of phase one of the Gateway District plan, will open in 2025. Leipold met with architects last fall to go over designs. The meeting lasted almost 2 1/2 hours. For a career builder like him, this is the ultimate renovation project.

Leipold locked in a contract extension through 2029, a commitment to stay at a place where he can be successful on his own terms, winning his way. Kansas keeps upping its investment in him with a salary approaching $7 million plus nearly $9 million for his staff.

“His approach, his staff, their approach, it works,” Goff said. “And it works, most importantly to any of us, right here at Kansas. And it’s gonna continue to work right here at Kansas.”

After three decades in coaching, Leipold intended for the Kansas job to be his last one. He’s been a target for several vacancies — Washington, Texas A&M, Nebraska, Wisconsin — but he and his coaches didn’t come here for a quick fix. They’re not merely aiming for bowl games.

Leipold says they took this on to do something people thought couldn’t be done: long-term success at a place that’s seen it in men’s basketball but never football.

“You know, everybody thinks this is a stop along the way and not a destination when you’re the head football coach at Kansas,” Leipold said. “We’re going to make this an and school — a basketball and a football school, not an or — so that this becomes a destination for football coaches as well.”

Daniels, Neal and 26 more players with starting experience are back for 2024. What seemed impossible a few short years ago suddenly looks attainable: It’s time for Kansas to make a real run at a Big 12 title. The coaches and players who know Leipold best know better than to bet against him.

“There’s a part of every good football coach that believes they could do it, that they could be the one,” McCaslin said. “You don’t do the things that Lance has done if you don’t have a little bit of that in you.”

TLBRIA

Too Long But Read It Anyway GLAD I DID!!!

Thanks,

--RC