Over at The Athletic, friend of the site Max Olson has written a deep, deep, deep dive into Lance Leipold's rise to become college football's most respected architect. The piece begins with the moment a 22-year-old Leipold decided to quit his career as an aspiring law enforcement officer to enroll in grad school and pursue a career in coaching.
It took 20 years in the business for Leipold to land a head coaching job. Despite his status as a former Warhawks quarterback and assistant, he was not a popular hire in Whitewater.
Seventeen seasons later, the 59-year-old is in the final act of a College Football Hall of Fame career. He's 163-60 with six Division III national championships at Whitewater, two MAC East championships and the only AP Top 25 appearance in program history at Buffalo, and now a 3-year progression from two wins to six to nine at Kansas.
As the story states, Leipold is a true CEO coach. He doesn't coordinate either side of the ball, and delegates the nitty-gritty of the game-plan to his coordinators. Instead, as the story lays out, Leipold directs his energy into building the program. No goal is too big and no detail too small.
At Whitewater, Leipold got new facilities, new uniforms, and even fixed the irrigation of the practice fields. At Buffalo, he convinced the administration to purchase a full-fledged equipment truck rather than renting one. Kansas has committed north of half a billion dollars in facility and stadium improvements under Leipold's watch.
The reason I wanted it write about it here is Olson's story touches on something rarely discussed when the topic of facilities is brought up in college football. A new locker room isn't just a vehicle for players to become bigger, faster and stronger: it's a force multiplier.
As Leipold explains, players will become more invested in the program if they know the program is invested in them.
“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.”
The irony is that Leipold's building of Kansas coincides with what many expect to be the end of the decades-long facilities arms race in college football. This week, Ole Miss AD Keith Carter said his department has shelved planned improvements to Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium, realizing that money will be better spent paying players.
But, it doesn't take a new stadium for players to realize that their program is investing in them. And when college football's full-fledged pay-for-play era arrives, he'll still be coaching at Kansas (he's now under contract through 2029) and finding different ways to show his players that they're not just giving.