On September 19th, London will host its first College Football game as the University of Kansas Jayhawks will take on the Arizona State Sun Devils at Wembley Stadium.

Two Big 12 Conference teams will face off in the UK capital in the third game of the college football season.

Looking ahead to the game, Jayhawks head coach Lance Leipold spoke during a UK media roundtable and spoke to the Franchise Tag amongst many other outlets.

Leipold has established himself as one of the most successful NCAA head coaches. He became the fastest coach to reach 100 wins in NCAA history and has reached seven NCAA Division III Championships during his time with the Wisconsin-Whitewater Warhawks. He won six of these and achieved a 109-6 record with the team, including five undefeated seasons.

In 2021, Leipold joined the Jayhawks. Two years later, he guided them to a 4-0 start, the first time this has happened since 1915. During the same season, he helped them win their first Bowl Game since the 2008 season. He spoke of his excitement to travel to London in September.

“You know, this is an exciting time. This is something that I looked in my career, even when I coached at the lower levels of NCAA football, about international travel for student athlete experience.

“I truly believe that this matchup and having this game at Wembley and in London is just the beginning of the growth of what will become, probably what will be, very parallel to what the NFL has been doing as far as international American football play.

“And I think the growth of college football as we look for new avenues and things and growth in our game. This will be something that we'll look upon as really a historical experience.”

Previous International experience and the growth of College Football across Europe

Leipold spoke on whether the upcoming Wembley game came up in recruitment meetings.

I look back, and back in 1993 I was a graduate assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin. We played in Tokyo and I still look back at that as an awesome experience. And the players that are played on that, a really good football team that won the big 10, still talk about that trip and what it can be and I think our players will have that same reaction and reflection.”

The Franchise Tag’s own Gareth Smith then asked Coach Leipold about the growth of college football in the UK, thanks in large part to the game being shown for free in the UK as well as the rise of international players.

“I'm very excited about it. At my time at Buffalo, we were exposed to a lot of international players.

“I think again, as the game grows, you know, I've mentioned basketball before, you could take other sports, if you take basketball and look at the influx over 20 years of international players and how they took a model and wanted to grow their game and make it work.

‘There's almost as many players taken in the NBA draft that are international than there are American players in the first round.

“I don't know if that's going to happen in football, but as much as we can do to continue to grow the game, and it's going to be through a game like this. Hopefully somebody there is going to come to that game, or see this stuff and they might be eight, nine, 10, years old, and they're going to go, I want to be a Kansas Jayhawk, or Sun Devil, or I want to go play in that type of environment.”

Adapting to the change in transfer portal

Leipold’s coaching career started in 1987. Since then, College Football has seen some changes. One of these is the NCAA transfer portal.

Initially launched in 2018, there were drastic changes three years later to allow athetes to change colleges without missing a year. Speaking to The Mirror’s Andrew Gamble, Leipold spoke of whether the existence and growth of the portal has benefitted or hurt the Kansas programme and whether they have had to adapt.

“Well, you know, it's continued to reshape college football and how we, as coaches and as head coaches, really run our programmes.

“We were vastly under scholarshipped here and we had to find ways that the NCAA had limitations on how many players you could sign in the high school and junior college ranks with what was called initial scholarship. So this programme could never get up to the maximum number of 85 for a long time. But when this, when the transfer portal came in and allowed us to get up to speed and do those things.

“Many people will talk about the job that Coach [Curt] Signetti has done at Indiana, and that'll be a model that many will want and expect many of us to try to replicate, but I think you have a chance to create competition. The nice thing that it's been able to do for us, as far as improving our teams, is you're able to evaluate players that have played college football. So much is projection when you deal with high school players, and again, a five-star player, a four star, a guy who's going to immediately help and do things, that's pretty easy to decide.

“But most of us in college football still have to be on the developmental end of players and developing skills and transitioning those, translating those into the college game.

That could be somebody that comes from a very small town that played in a small high school level, and you're trying to project that.

“The transfer portal allows you to get a player that actually has those college snaps, and that's really helped.”

Adding in experience and being inspired by other schools

Leipold and the Jayhawks will want to improve on their 5-7 record in 2025. Speaking to the Touchdown’s Simon Carroll, he spoke about this year’s roster changes, with 7,000 snaps added to the roster via the portal.

“When you when you're looking for experienced players, you know, for us, there's a lot of components that go into it.

“Last year, we had a player, Emmanuel Henderson, that transferred to us from the University of Alabama. So you get somebody from a blue blood programme that just had troubles getting on the field and getting snaps was very impactful.

“Another receiver for us, Cam Pickett, came from Ball State, more of a group of six school. Sometimes those group of six players that have a lot of snaps versus a guy who can't get on the field. There's an evaluation that goes in both hands, guys that have proven many snaps versus a guy that's been a pretty elite athlete that just can't get on the field in those things.

“We try to look at all components that are going to make our team better. What we're trying to do is create enough competition that everyone is going to raise their level of play to help us win football games. And I sometimes you bring a portal player in, and your current player that was a backup really rises the occasion and plays at a level to win the job.

“This was a programme that had struggled maintaining any type of success for a long time. The last two years, we've had senior classes matriculate of well over 30 players, which was extremely high in college football. Prior to this year, the University of Clemson and the University of Kansas had the least amount of scholarship players enter the transfer portal over a two-year period.

“So we had done a great job in that retention that I had talked about, but with two big classes of seniors, all of a sudden you become a little bit of a younger football team, and there's some experiences and snaps that have been depleted. We knew we had to get some players with game snaps and things available. We go into the portal and look for a guy that can help us, and he's had college snaps as well. So I think that's where some of those gain snaps kind of occur.”

Speaking to content creator American TJ, Leipold spoke of whether his philosophy has changed when recruiting players and developing those that do arrive in the building.

“I think it has been modified. Obviously, I just talked about the amount of transfers we bought in. I'd never thought that I would be saying that we would have 32 transfers coming in. I never thought that that would be where the games evolved. So that definitely has changed.

“What hasn't changed, is our expectations of what what's expected of you once you get here. Whether it be academic or athletic requirements, you need to be coachable. You need to be able to take coaching and take it. And that's academically coaching to be the best students you can be, or if it's the best athlete that you can be. Whether it be through nutrition, through the weight room, whatever that is, besides the position that you play. And again, give us your best effort.

“If you compromise and cheat yourself on effort in any of those areas that I just touched on, you're cheating yourself. You're cheating the programme. So I think at its core, what we try to do has not been modified, and I don't see myself changing at this stage of my career.

“Since May 1st, 2021, I don't know if there's been nine months of consistency in college football and how we have to go about our job. It might have been NIL, it might have been the portal, it might have been then how NIL is going to be distributed. It could be all these. We have had to continually change amongst this game, and I think it has changed more than ever in the last five years, than ever before.

“You have either got to adapt or you're going to die and I think we all have to try to modify how we go about doing this. And I think we have, and I think we'll continue to do so.”

This year’s Hall of Fame class saw former New England Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri inducted into Canton. He spent time with the Amsterdam Admirals in 1996 in NFL Europe. Speaking to writer and BBC Radio 5 Live’s Anthony Wootton, Leipold spoke on the growth of the league during his time as a coach and whether he would want to see a feeder league such as NFL Europe return.

“Absolutely, I'm anything about opportunity and chances for people to keep playing the game that they love, the I can remember and again, schedules and other things watching but, but in my earlier days of coaching and doing things, I used to try to watch NFL Europe.

“I used to try to watch the London Monarchs play and do things in the cool uniforms and all the different things that you could kind of see. I think the NFL, I'm not trying to speak for them, but in some of the meetings I've been in is, you know, whether it be what is

now the UFL, the USFL, the XFL, they continue to try to find ways for quarterback development.

“As you mention Adam, you only have one kicker. They only get so many chances. You only have so many chances to make a pressure kick and do those things anytime you can get it. The other position that the NFL has talked about to wants to keep developing is offensive line play, because I think the speed and anything that allows people to get more game reps and our game is so unique.

“You can go play pickup basketball and get better at your game. You don't get a bunch of guys go play pickup football. So how do you get better at it? You got to play it.

“We spend a lot of time lifting, training and running, but you still got to play the game, to work the skill, and then to have the video that shows that you're capable of doing it. So any of these opportunities, I would be all for.”

Can Fernando Mendoza succeed in the NFL?

The NFL Draft is just over a month away, as fans will descend to Pittsburgh to see if their team can select a future star. With the first overall pick, it is widely expected that the Las Vegas Raiders will select Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza.

Despite the hope, there is no guarantee that the Heisman Trophy winner will go on to be a success. Speaking to Anthony [Wootton], he also spoke of whether he can be a franchise quarterback in the NFL and gave a funny anecdote about his time as a quarterback 40 years ago.

“When I was coaching at Whitewater, where I played, we had a youth football camp, and we had a checkout and a mother came to pick up her son and she came up very proudly as she was checking her son out and said, My husband intercepted one of your passes in high school.

“And I said, Well, unfortunately, ma'am, there's a lot of wives whose husbands intercepted my passes in high school so I don't know if he's standing on an island right now.

“Mendoza has had an outstanding career. I think what impressed me, and I didn't see a tonne of Indiana football, except down the stretch, but you see a young man who has handled success with composure and maturity and a leadership style that I think absolutely gives him a chance to do that. As I said, Coach Signetti’s done a great job. I think he's got what it takes and I think, I think he's got a great chance to be that first pick and be impactful.”

Speaking to the Touchdown’s Simon Carroll, Leipold discussed which players will stand out to the UK fans when the two teams meet in September, including running back Dylan Edwards.

“Yeah, I think we've added a lot of impact players. We've increased our team speed immensely in a lot of areas. I think we've addressed. We had some holes to fill that receiver and tight end. We've done that. We brought in two other bigger running backs. Dylan has a skill set, and he is shown to be a highly productive player in the Big 12 Conference starting off and playing as a true freshman at Colorado, and then returning to the state of Kansas and playing at Kansas State here the last couple years. He gives us some speed, quickness, make you miss ability, and ability for a home run play, so to speak, of taking it the distance that I don't know if we've had in a little bit here.

“Getting him healthy after missing most of last year after being injured on the first punt return at really, in Dublin last year, he never fully got healthy, so we're excited to have him. He's excited to be here, and I hope the fans there get a chance to really see what type of player he can be.”

Andy Davies

Kansas prepared for Union Jack Classic

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