Irving, Texas ? A quick look at the attendance sheet for this week’s Big 12 media days outside of Dallas revealed most teams had sent their best player.
Pencil the Kansas University football squad into that category.
Though he might not be the most outspoken Jayhawk, defensive end Jake Laptad, a 6-foot-4, 260-pound senior from Tulsa, Okla., certainly has a right to claim he’s tops on the team. Laptad led the squad in sacks and tackles-for-loss in 2009 and was second in both categories in 2008. In doing so, he earned honorable mention All-Big 12 recognition twice and established himself as a bona fide thorn in the side of opposing offenses.
Fellow senior Brad Thorson, who joined Laptad, Chris Harris and head coach Turner Gill at media days Wednesday, was not shy in praising his teammate.
“Come on, Jake’s our best player,” said Thorson, asked if he thought KU’s media days lineup stacked up against the rest of the conference. “I really think so. One of the things people don’t realize is that Jake’s rushing the left tackle every play. If you haven’t noticed, they’re all getting drafted in the first round in the Big 12. So he’s got a tough job ahead of him every week, but I love the way he approaches things. I always compare Jake to Howie Long’s son (Chris Long, now with the St. Louis Rams). Great motor, he’s got intensity, he’s got fire.”
And now, for the first time in his career, he has some personality.
Known for years as one of the quietest guys on the team, Laptad came out of his shell a bit Wednesday when speaking with reporters. He seemed more relaxed. He seemed more confident. Heck, he even seemed to enjoy the situation a little.
“I went through some questions and got a little prepped for it,” Laptad said with a laugh. “It’s an honor to be chosen as one of the team leaders to come down here to media day, and I’m just enjoying it.”
Laptad’s emergence as a more comfortable player can be directly tied to the arrival of Gill. During one of his first meetings with the Jayhawks, Gill passed out a questionnaire and asked his new players to fill it out. One question on the list asked, “Who was the most influential person in your life and why?”
For Laptad, the answer was his father, Darren, who was responsible for the light question-and-answer session that prepared his son for media days.
“We have a good relationship,” Laptad said of his dad. “He was my coach in all my sports growing up. He taught me how to work hard and always push through tough times.”
Judging by the way Laptad carried himself Wednesday, Gill might find his way into that answer the next time the question comes up.
“He’s opened up a lot around coach Gill, and coach Gill has helped him open up,” Harris said of Laptad. “You can tell by just looking at Jake that coach Gill’s approach is helping.”
So, did Harris, also a native of Oklahoma, agree with Thorson’s assessment of Laptad’s standing on this year’s team?
“Is he the best player on our team? I don’t know, man,” Harris said. “I can’t put him before me.”
As Harris continued, he brought the video game “NCAA Football 2011” into the argument, much the way a lawyer presents evidence during a trial.
“I’m an 87,” Harris said. “And I’m listed as an impact player, too, so I always let Jake hear about that. See, if you go by the ratings, I’m ahead of Jake.”
The simple truth of it all is, on this team, nobody is ahead of anybody else. That includes the head coach, who preached throughout the day Wednesday that his No. 1 priority after arriving at KU was to get his new team to bond.
“I’m a firm believer in building relationships,” Gill said. “That was the first thing I wanted our football program, our football team, to do.”
So, little by little, the plan was set into motion. It started with the questionnaire and expanded to one-on-one chats and impromptu speeches in front of the entire team.
“I wanted to make sure that we got a chance to know that we have a lot more in common with each other than we have differences,” Gill said.
Asked which moment or which player’s response impacted him the most, Gill showed further that his vision is all-encompassing.
“Everybody’s story touched me because I got to know them all a lot deeper, plus I think the football team got to know each other a lot deeper,” Gill said. “I gained a lot more knowledge about who they are and where they come from and a little bit more sense of why they are the way they are. It was great. That was really the whole point of doing it. To make everybody realize that everybody has a story, and we’re a lot closer than you think.”
While Gill wanted to make the day about his players and his new program, many in attendance wanted to make it about him. For starters, Gill is one of two new coaches to join the Big 12 this season — Texas Tech’s Tommy Tuberville is the other — and, to many members of the national media, his presence provided an opportunity to float some fresh questions and troll for new storylines.
That was particularly true with the Nebraska media, who spent several minutes dissecting Gill’s relationship with former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne. They also prodded the former Nebraska quarterback to analyze how he felt about coaching against his alma mater later this season, something to which Gill said he hasn’t given a whole lot of thought. True to form, Gill did his best to deflect as much of that talk as he could.
“This is not about me,” he said. “Our job, as coaches, is to take a player’s talent and get that talent out of him every single day. If he’s a 4.7-guy, we’re going to make sure he runs a 4.7 every single play. Every team is going to have some guys who are talented and some guys are not quite as talented. But if we get the best out of all of them together as a unit, then we will have a top-notch football team.”
