Anyone eager to find out the identity of the Kansas football team’s staring quarterback this year may have some waiting to do.
Following the Jayhawks’ first preseason practice on Thursday, head coach Lance Leipold said he’s not in a rush to choose the right man for the job.
Leipold told reporters outside of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium he isn’t concerned about having a timetable for reaching a conclusion on the matter, either.
“I don’t know, what time’s kickoff? 7:05?” KU’s head coach asked about his team’s upcoming opener against South Dakota. “It might be 7:05 (p.m.), Friday the third (of September).”
The former Buffalo and Wisconsin-Whitewater head coach said he has it’s better to take your time with such matters.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever pin myself on dates and things like that,” Leipold said after his first practice as KU’s head coach. “If it shows itself and we go, then it’s going to go.”
The frontrunners for KU’s staring QB job are expected to be sophomore Jalon Daniels, junior Jason Bean and senior Miles Kendrick.
KU football opened its preseason camp without a couple of notable names, as neither returning leading rusher Velton Gardner nor potential starting defensive end Steven Parker were in uniform for the first practice.
Leipold said as of Thursday morning he didn’t have any updates on the players who were out.
“That just kind of came from the training room,” the coach said of a list of nine Jayhawks who were unable to go on the first day of camp. “We’ll see where that takes us and go from there.”
Joining junior running back Gardner and sophomore Parker on the list were redshirt freshman linebacker Alonso Person, sophomore receiver Torry Locklin, freshman receivers Majik Rector and Tanaka Scott, junior receiver Kevin Terry, redshirt freshman receiver Jordan Brown and redshirt freshman fullback Jared Casey.
The newest Big 12 football coach didn’t have much to say about the conference’s biggest news of the summer, the recent revelation that Texas and Oklahoma will be leaving the league to join the SEC.
“Obviously it caught us all by surprise,” Leipold replied, when asked for his reaction to the latest round of conference realignment.
“There’s going to be a lot of things to talk about and things for you to cover in that,” he added. “But honestly with where we’re at (as a staff and a program) and the timeline that we’re under, we’re in the Big 12 and I’m preparing this team for a Big 12 season. And that’s where all our focus needs to be.”
In Leipold’s first year with KU, the Jayhawks will play host to OU on Oct. 23 and play at Texas on Nov. 13.
Every Jayhawk in uniform for Thursday’s practice wore a blue helmet featuring his first name on the front and his lsat name on the back.
With Leipold and several of his former UB assistants still relatively new to the program, the head coach thought the strips of tape with names might come in handy.
“You see them without helmets for the summer and you’re just getting to know them,” he said, “and now you’re trying to memorize them.”