What's next for Leipold & Kansas?

The Kansas Jayhawks keep losing, the fan base is clearly angry and happy times are gone again for KU football in Lawrence, Kansas.

All because of a handful of games over the past couple of seasons that came down to the wire and would’ve changed everything had they gone the other way.

Imagine, for a second, if KU had won 7 of the 10 games in which it had a lead in the final 2 minutes since 2024 instead of losing them. We’d be talking about four, maybe five, straight bowl trips and a head coach headed toward a statue.

Instead, those close calls turned to losses — for a variety of reasons and in a number of ways — and the grumbling continues to grow louder.

So, what’s next after this most recent one, a gut-wrenching 33-32 home loss to UCF in which Leipold's Jayhawks came back from down 26-7 to take a 32-26 lead with a minute left only to see UCF steal the win back on the final snap of the game?

Talk about a loaded question.

Technically, the Jayhawks do still have three games to play this season and, therefore, could win all three and become bowl eligible.

With two of those on the road and two against teams either ranked or receiving votes in the latest polls, it’s hard to see that happening. But it wouldn’t be a shocker if KU found a way to compete in all three of its remaining games — Oct. 14 at West Virginia, Oct. 21 vs. No. 9 BYU and Oct. 28 at Oklahoma State.

It also wouldn’t be a shocker to see KU lose by wide margins in each game. After all, BYU has been one of the best teams in the country, West Virginia nearly beat Texas Tech in Lubbock on Saturday night, hanging 48 points in the process, and OSU beat Oregon earlier this season and put up 66 on K-State this weekend.

KU’s best win? At home against a Baylor team that fired its coach and yet became bowl eligible with three games still to play.

Something’s clearly not clicking for Kansas football right now, and there are probably a number of reasons. But Lance Leipold’s the head coach and since Leipold makes roughly $7 million a year and is slated to do so through the next three years, and since Leipold is the man responsible for bringing all of these players and coaches to town, he’s the one who catches the heat.

As it should be.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at three different possible next steps involving Leipold to try to decipher which one is (a) the best path forward for Kansas and (b) the most likely to happen.

The answer to those questions could be the same thing or it could be drastically different.

Here goes.

OPTION 1 – Leipold is retained by the KU football program for another season & heads into the offseason as KU’s coach for 2027.

I still think this is the most likely of any of these options, for a couple of reasons.

First, KU AD Travis Goff likes Leipold and appreciates the hell out of him for coming to KU in the first place, turning things around and changing the culture and adding stability to a program that had been an absolute dumpster fire for more than a decade.

There was talent from 2010 to 2021, but the program lacked discipline, accountability, consistency and more. From coach to coach and AD to AD, those things remained an issue. They haven’t been under Leipold and that has made both him and Goff look good, even if they haven’t won as much as anybody would prefer they had.

Second — and maybe this should be first — there’s that whole buyout thing. It would cost KU nearly $18 million to send Leipold packing and more than that when you consider buyouts for his current assistants, too.

KU’s not in any position to spend that kind of dough to tell a coach to hit the road. Very few places are these days. And unless there’s a donor out there who has grown so tired of these close-call losses that he or she wants to cut the check themselves, it’s hard to picture KU biting the bullet and saying goodbye to Lance and that much money.

Now, they can have hard conversations. The expectations can be reset. And Leipold could be retained with a clear understanding that things have to be different moving forward, “or else,” and I think it’s pretty much certain that this would happen in some form or fashion if Leipold is, in fact, back next season.

OPTION 2 – Leipold is fired by Travis Goff at season’s end with a thanks for everything but it’s time to go kind of send-off.

I don’t think this is very likely, but I don’t think the idea can be completely discarded either.

Things are tense. And we need to see how these next three games go before we can make any kind of definitive guess about what will or won’t happen.

As an example of this, just look back to 2014. I think former KU DC Clint Bowen had a pretty damn good chance of becoming the Jayhawks’ full-time head coach back after he filled in as interim-HC following the decision to fire Charlie Weis four weeks into that season.

But the Jayhawks under Bowen had one awful showing down the stretch — Oklahoma standout Samaje Perine set an NCAA record for rushing yards in a single game in an absolute beatdown of the Jayhawks in Norman — and it turned so many people off of Bowen as the answer that AD Sheahon Zenger felt like he could not hire him.

So, they went with David Beaty instead, and you all know how that worked out.

The point is this: If Lance wins another game or two the rest of the way, he’s probably a lock to be retained. But if they keep losing like this, or worse, it might rev things up to the point where people want to see him gone. Right or wrong.

Don’t forget that buyout mentioned above. That can and almost certainly will play a huge role in how things progress from here.

OPTION 3 – Leipold is not fired but decides that he’s ready to call it a career. He agrees to terms on a retirement package that works for all parties involved and Goff goes searching for a new head coach while thanking Leipold for the job he did to dig KU out from under the wreckage that the program was trapped under when he arrived.

This one intrigues me, in large part because it wouldn’t shock me if you told me that Leipold is ready to be done anyway.

He still loves coaching, he still loves the challenges it presents on a weekly basis — particularly in season — and he loves and appreciates the coaches he works with and players he goes to battle with.

But college football is different than it’s ever been and I’m not sure the changes, many of them drastic, have rubbed him right.

I think he’s fine with players getting compensated, but the money that gets tossed around is pretty outrageous. It's also become the first thing pretty much everybody talks during the recruiting process.

In addition to that, I think he’s OK with guys getting second chances elsewhere, but the whole transfer portal phenomenon isn’t really his thing.

Remember, this was a guy who absolutely crushed it at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater by taking guys who were overlooked or unwanted elsewhere and coaching them up into a national powerhouse program.

He got buy-in from nearly every one of those guys. He inspired them to play hard and tapped into that chip on their shoulders to get the best out of them while building and developing meaningful relationships with so many of them, as well.

That’s becoming harder and harder to do at the Division I FBS level, where so many players are making a boatload of money and there’s always the opportunity to go somewhere else if you get tired of what you’re hearing or getting from your current program.

That’s not Leipold. He hasn’t even really been all that shy about expressing that. And it wouldn’t surprise me much if, given the opportunity to bow out gracefully, he chose to make a permanent move to Florida, where he and his wife, Kelly, have a home and could slide into their retirement years of sun, sand, seafood and a stress-free way of life.

I think there’d be part of him that would miss coaching. There probably already is a part of him that misses what it used to be. But he’s had a great career and made a lot of money, and you never know what tomorrow is going to bring.

There have to be days where the idea of plopping down on the beach and spending more time with his family sounds awfully appealing to him.

It’s anybody’s guess what will happen the rest of the way let alone what will happen when the season ends, be it in ugly fashion or with three straight wins to reach a bowl game.

And how things play out over the next three weeks likely will have a huge impact on which one of those scenarios listed above is the direction things go from here.

For what it's worth, I'd be willing to bet pretty good money that, as things stand today, no one knows the answer — not Leipold, not Goff, not the big money donors, nobody.

Let's see what happens.