Lance Leipold describes Big 12 media days experience without former QB

Jul 10, 2026 - 08:10

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Lance Leipold describes Big 12 media days experience without former QB

FRISCO, Texas — Jalon Daniels was one of the faces of the Kansas football program for years.

As he battled through health issues in 2022 and 2023, he was part of the teams that reached back-to-back bowl games those years. He played all 24 games for the Jayhawks across 2024 and 2025. Even back in 2021, he was at quarterback when KU went on the road and beat Texas.

But now Daniels is pursuing a professional career, and his time college has come to an end. So, this week in Frisco, Texas, he wasn’t one of Kansas’ player representatives at Big 12 Conference media days. And for coach Lance Leipold, whose first season at the helm at KU was in 2021, that’s not something he was exactly used to experiencing.

“Our first year, we were going to fly down the day of and storms prevented us from getting to media day, we had to Zoom in, so this is my first media day without Jalon Daniels and I kind of … miss him a little bit in that regard,” Leipold said. “Because he kind of guided us and always gave us a lot of life in that. But, it’s different. But, as we know, we all move on.”

The five players Kansas did bring were redshirt senior wide receiver Cam Pickett, redshirt junior offensive lineman Calvin Clements, junior defensive end Leroy Harris III, redshirt junior defensive tackle Blake Herold and redshirt senior linebacker Trey Lathan. KU, currently, has a quarterback battle unfolding. The main two options are redshirt junior Cole Ballard and redshirt sophomore Isaiah Marshall.

Kansas is coming off of a pair of 5-7 seasons in which it didn’t reach the heights it’d set out for, so is looking to regain some momentum. Bringing Andy Kotelnicki back on staff as associated head coach should help, given he was an offensive coordinator at KU those early years before spending the past two at Penn State. The season opener is set for Sept. 4 at home against LIU.

$Oct 25, 2025; Lawrence, Kansas, USA; Kansas Jayhawks quarterback Jalon Daniels (6) drops back to pass against the \ during the first half of the game at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-Imagn Images$

Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He was the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Lance Leipold describes Big 12 media days experience without former QB