One of the most intriguing members of Kansas football’s 2025 signing class owes his spot with the Jayhawks to a KU men’s basketball golf outing.
Head coach Bill Self and his staff were on the links with 1993 World Series hero Joe Carter in Kansas City when the subject turned to Carter’s alma mater, Millwood High School in Oklahoma City.
“He said, ‘Hey, there’s a two-sport guy down there that y’all should take a look at,'” Self recalled at a recent press conference.
They in fact already knew of Jaden Nickens, and they learned he had long been committed to play football at Oklahoma. Meanwhile, Nickens had some reciprocal familiarity with KU, having been on campus for basketball camps, football coach Lance Leipold said.
After basketball assistant Kurtis Townsend spoke to Nickens, the football staff started to get involved in the recruiting process.
“When I talked to the basketball staff and football staff, they were all very excited about me playing the other sport,” Nickens told Jon Kirby of JayhawkSlant.com.
By Nov. 14 Nickens had committed to KU for both sports, and on early signing day he officially became a Jayhawk.
“For him to have ties and recruitment for an opportunity to play basketball, and to do it here, was probably his deciding factor,” Leipold said. “He’s an excitable young man, he’s got a chance to be a really good football player, and we’re excited to have him here.”
From his outside perspective, Self said, “This youngster has a chance to be hopefully an all-league-type receiver.”
Nickens isn’t at Millwood anymore. After spending the 2023 football season there, he transferred and played basketball at nearby Douglass High School the following semester, then went across the country to Sierra Canyon in Chatsworth, California, for his senior year.
Nickens was once ranked the No. 21 overall prospect in the country by Rivals in the spring of 2023. He’s now the site’s No. 30 receiver and No. 49 at the position on 247Sports, and a three-star by most assessments. Even if he’s not as highly rated as he once was, given the KU football team’s void at his position following the graduation of its top four wideouts, he could contribute quite soon, along with fellow receiver signees Jackson Cook, Bryson Hayes and Tate Nagy.
The question when it comes to Nickens is just how robust his two-sport experience will be. Certainly he was a higher-profile recruit for football than basketball. As Leipold said, it was clearly a priority for him in the recruiting process to play both sports, which Nickens said himself when he decommitted from OU in March and again when he pledged to KU.
The plan is for Nickens to play football until the conclusion of the season and then join the basketball program.
Self, who has had a handful of two-sport athletes in the past who, as he put it, “haven’t been two-sport athletes to be a contributor with us,” said the KU staff is entering Nickens’ time on campus “knowing he’s football first and foremost.”
“Depending on how it plays out, who knows how it’ll play out,” Self said. “But certainly his athleticism and everything could be good for us, there’s no question, but we won’t see him until a late date.
“And with that being said, then you still got roster limits to worry about with that.”
The roster limits that the House settlement is set to impose will place a significant constraint on the KU men’s basketball program. Instead of having access to 13 scholarships and adding a variety of walk-ons, teams will only be able to have 15 total players regardless of scholarship status. Except Self confirmed that KU can only have 14 for the 2025-26 campaign as a result of its longest-lasting penalty from the IARP, since it chose to use all of its possible scholarships for the 2024-25 season.
“Do you go get 14 guys on scholarship?” he wondered aloud. “Do you take two developmental guys on scholarship that you don’t have to pay a lot of NIL money to and hope it pans out? Do you try to keep the same guys that are present in your program with guys and try to get 11 scholarship guys and roll the dice with the other three? I don’t know exactly how we’re going to do it.”
If Self opted for 13 scholarship players as the Jayhawks have fielded in recent years, that group and Nickens would account for the entire team, meaning KU would be unable to roster any other walk-ons.
Self said there will be unknowns “until probably summertime” when it comes to handling the roster.
“I’ve always thought you start with what you really need and then you work your way down to it,” he said, “as opposed to doing the other (way) and then you don’t know, it may jam some situation that you can’t go after late.”
Nickens won’t be the first KU football player to juggle multiple sports in the Leipold era. Trevor Kardell and Devin Neal briefly played baseball for the Jayhawks and current starting center Bryce Foster will throw on the track and field team this spring.
Jaden Nickens
Nick Krug
Kansas Athletics