Watch the Kansas Jayhawks football team arrive to bowl-game fanfare in rainy Phoenix

Shreyas Laddha
·2 min read
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The University of Kansas football team arrived to great fanfare on a rainy Friday afternoon in Phoenix.

The Jayhawks walked out onto a blue carpet with a Mariachi band playing as Guaranteed Rate Bowl representatives, wearing yellow-orange blazers, celebrated KU’s arrival with smiles, fist-bumps and handshakes.

KU coach Lance Leipold appreciated the warm welcome.

“I’m glad to see all these great yellow jackets,” he said, “and really the hospitality that has been shown from the second we walked off the plane to our time when the guys came to Lawrence is definitely appreciated and felt throughout the athletic department.”

Kansas went 8-4 this season (5-4 Big 12), clinching bowl eligibility by beating Oklahoma on Oct. 28. KU’s making a second consecutive bowl appearance for just the second time, and a victory Tuesday would mean nine wins for just the sixth time in program history.

KU will face UNLV (9-4, 6-2 Mountain West Conference) in Tuesday’s game. It’s a marquee matchup for the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, which features teams that won eight or more games and are fairly similar offensively.

Those similarities aren’t lost on Leipold.

“I think, first of all, when somebody has the option schemes in their game, there’s all of a sudden a match there,” he said. “It is the multiples, the movements, the unique formations that really cause a stress on defenses.”

Of UNLV, Leipold noted: “They’ve been really opportunistic in the big-play category. That’s going to be very important for us in this game — to shut that down.”

In his third season with the Jayhawks, Leipold has emphasized that improvements don’t happen overnight. But next week’s game is a testament to some sustained success.

And that’s not lost on Leipold either: Consecutive bowl appearances haven’t exactly been a trademark of Kansas football.

“I think it’s a mark of consistency that it wasn’t a one-time flash-in-the-pan,” Leipold said. “We wanted to build a program that’s going to be stable for many years. ...

“For the first time in a very long time, we can be serious about football.”