Kansas coach Lance Leipold didn’t have to go far to find good information about Missouri quarterback Beau Pribula.
Andy Kotelnicki, who spent 11 seasons working for Leipold as his offensive coordinator across stops at Wisconsin-Whitewater, Buffalo and KU, “raved about him as a person, as a quarterback,” when the two coaches spoke this summer, Leipold said.
In his first year away from Leipold, Kotelnicki coached Pribula at Penn State last year. Pribula, a talented rusher and the sort of multitalented player Kotelnicki enjoyed using at KU as well, served as a sort of change-of-pace quarterback for the Nittany Lions. He threw for 275 yards with five touchdowns and an interception and rushing for 242 yards and four more scores for a team that eventually went to the College Football Playoff.
“He just talked about (how) he’s a really outstanding young man, and really handled a tough situation about entering the portal,” Leipold said.
In order to make a move to another school and participate in spring practice there ahead of the 2025 season, Pribula had to leave the Nittany Lions before the start of their College Football Playoff run. As he wrote in his announcement on Dec. 16, “The current NCAA post-season model creates a challenge for student-athletes. The overlapping CFB playoff and transfer portal timeline has forced me into an impossible decision.”
Leipold said Kotelnicki told him that Pribula practiced with the team on the morning he went into the portal, “which says a lot that it was a tough decision, and obviously the timelines which we’re under in this (are) difficult for teams like that.”
“When you play the position of quarterback, and there’s only one spot and those spots are filling up, he felt like he was put in a no-win situation, and I agree with him,” Penn State coach James Franklin told reporters at the time.
The Nittany Lions beat SMU and Boise State but fell in the semifinal round to Notre Dame. In the meantime, their former quarterback Pribula reportedly visited Iowa, Ole Miss and UCF before settling on Missouri as his transfer destination.
The York, Pennsylvania, native spent the Tigers’ training camp in a quarterback competition with two-sport athlete Sam Horn, an MLB-drafted pitcher who missed the 2024 baseball and football seasons due to Tommy John surgery. Both Horn and Pribula were expected to play in Missouri’s opener against Central Arkansas last Thursday. However, that plan got derailed when Horn suffered a leg injury on his first snap against the Bears that Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz has said will keep him out for an “extended period of time.”
That means it’s Pribula’s job now, and the graduate transfer quarterback answered the call. In his 25th career game (with 329 offensive snaps) but his first career start, he went 23-for-28 for 283 yards with two passing touchdowns and carried the ball 10 times for 62 more yards and two rushing touchdowns, all in essentially three quarters of action.
“The buildup of this week is something that I’ve been waiting for for a long time, just an opportunity like this,” Pribula told reporters postgame, “and I was extremely excited.”
He’ll face a much tougher defense in taking on KU on Saturday, although the Jayhawks, too, could have their hands full with the best quarterback they’ve faced thus far this season — particularly with a potentially depleted group of linebackers heading to Columbia, with three of the top six players injured.
Kickoff at Faurot Field is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki watches warmups before an NCAA college football game between Penn State and Ohio State, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, in State College, Pa.
Liz Rymarev/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP
AP Photo/Barry Reeger