In the weight room, during film sessions, before and after team meetings and, of course, on the practice fields, the Jayhawks have adopted a new mantra for the 2016 season, and its three-word cadence is audible every time the team breaks a huddle or gathers together before tackling its next task.

“We will win,” the players roar in unison.

“It’s just the slogan we’re going with this year,” said junior linebacker Joe Dineen after Wednesday’s second spring practice of 2016. “But there’s a lot of meaning to it. It’s confidence. It’s, we will win, not, we might win. We have to. There’s no other option.”

Dineen said he did not know exactly where the saying originated, but he and others remember the day, back in January, when they first heard it.

“When we got our workout shirts, it was on the back of ’em with our numbers,” quarterback Montell Cozart said. “We have ‘We will win,’ and we have ‘1-0,’ just go 1-0 on the day. Whether it’s the weight room, in the meeting room, on the field, in practice, all that stuff, we just feel like ‘1-0’ and ‘We will win,’ get our minds ready to be prepared for that next day and that next opportunity.”

While those opportunities include everything from fine-tuning proper fundamentals to competing for spots on the depth chart, the biggest opportunity the Jayhawks have this spring is the chance to move past last year’s 0-12 finish.

Throughout last season’s struggle, first-year coach David Beaty’s team did an admirable job of staying away from dwelling on its record and, instead, focused on trying to get better each day. There were days they improved and other days they took steps back, but no matter how it played out, the wins never came.

That, Dineen said, is why the new slogan is perfect for a new season because, as much as the Jayhawks admit that they still reflect back on 2015 for motivation from time to time, they’re much more focused on what’s ahead.

“I think you really can embrace it,” senior safety Fish Smithson said of the slogan. “If you keep saying something over and over and over, you’re gonna start to believe it. If we just keep working and keep saying it and keep working and keep saying it, we’re gonna start to believe that we’re really gonna win.”

Added Dineen: “No room for failure. We did enough of that last year, and it’s time to change it.”

Doing so will take patience and a steadfast commitment to believing in the process. So far, both Dineen and Smithson said this year’s team had picked up right where last year’s squad left off attitude-wise.

“You want to kind of forget about it, but it’s always there, like motivation driving you to lift one more rep,” Dineen said. “The coaches are getting us ready. They don’t want to look back. It’s all moving forward. But, as players, we know that that can’t happen again.”

Such knowledge does not have to be plastered across the back of a T-shirt for the Jayhawks to understand it. But Smithson said he liked seeing and hearing the reminder every day, and he had an idea who started it.

“I think it came from the man on top,” he said. “Coach Beaty came up with it, and I think it’s great. We will win. Three W’s, just short and sweet. Get right to the point. Nobody wants to have a season like we had last year.”