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Benton Smith was born in Kansas City, Mo., and bounced around in the years that followed, living in Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Carolina, before moving to Lawrence in 2006.
Along the way, he lived in Sanford, N.C., for a huge chunk of his life and graduated in 2002 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — an institution, he assures diehard Kansas fans, which he attended primarily for its in-state tuition and journalism program.
Shortly after moving to Lawrence, Smith began working part-time at the Journal-World, initially covering youth sports. Next, he covered Free State High athletics and area sports for the J-W, before taking on the position of sports editor for one of The World Company's weekly newspapers, The Mirror, in Tonganoxie. He worked there from 2008 to 2011, until returning to the Journal-World to lead its high school sports coverage.
In 2013, Smith took on a new role with KUsports.com, as a digital editor, blogger and writer and that role changed again in 2016, when Smith was promoted to KU football beat writer shortly after the World Company sold the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com to Ogden Newspapers.
Since the sale, Smith has become an even more important member of the KUsports.com team, expanding his coverage to include writing columns at men's basketball games and continuing to oversee our coverage of KU football, which included the hiring of Les Miles as KU's new head football coach in late 2018.
Kansas freshman K.J. Adams missed a game for the first time this season on Saturday, when he didn’t suit up for the Jayhawks’ home game versus Stephen F. Austin due to an illness.
A late-game Remy Martin 3-pointer helped the No. 8-ranked Kansas basketball team survive a scare Saturday night against Stephen F. Austin at Allen Fieldhouse.
When head coach Lance Leipold and his staff took over the Kansas football program this past May, they knew recruiting for the 2022 class would be slow-going at first, given the timing of the transition and only a handful of months left before the early signing period arrived. It didn’t take long for them to adapt and embrace the possibilities that the NCAA’s transfer portal had to offer.
As COVID-19 cases among players in the NFL, NBA, NHL and college basketball in recent days have games being postponed and rescheduled, Kansas basketball head coach Bill Self is knocking on wood while feeling “fortunate” that the Jayhawks haven’t yet encountered such issues.
Whether it will become a new Kansas football tradition remains to be seen, but for the second straight season the Jayhawks will kick off their schedule with a Friday night home opener in 2022.
When the Kansas football staff determined the Jayhawks needed to add a high school quarterback to their 2022 recruiting class, the coaches already had Ethan Vasko in mind.
Even though Texas Tech’s hiring of former Kansas football receivers coach Emmett Jones means KU will benefit from a $600,000 buyout, KU head coach Lance Leipold said the university did its best to keep Jones in Lawrence.
Kansas football head coach Lance Leipold was all of 10 seconds into his opening remarks during his early signing period press conference when he brought up the fact that the Jayhawks only signed six players on Wednesday.
The Kansas football program’s quarterback depth for 2022 took a hit when two reserves — Miles Kendrick and Conrad Hawley — decided to leave via the transfer portal.
Members of the Kansas football team’s 2022 recruiting class began making their commitments official on Wednesday morning, as the early signing period kicked off nationwide.