On September 19th, the University of Kansas Jayhawks will take on the Arizona State Sun Devils at London’s Wembley Stadium.

As the home of English football prepares to host a different type of football, Jayhawks General Manager Rob Ianello spoke at a UK media roundtable.

Last month, we brought you an article on the Leipold roundtable. In today’s piece, he Franchise Tag’s Gareth Smith had the chance to speak to Ianello amongst many other members of the UK media.

Gareth asked Rob about the rise of the transfer portal and what he looks for in a player becoming a Jayhawk.

“That's a great question, because it is when the portal opens, it's kind of like speed dating, a little bit. So you're getting a guy come on your campus. You're trying to call as many contacts as you can, people that you know would be from either the school he's leaving or his high school coach and trying to get as much background as you can on the young man. Even as he's on your campus, or as he's on the plane coming, you're still doing the research part of it for his background, his character, his work ethic. Does he fit with your culture?

“That’s a recruiting part. The other part, where you’ve got to get some questions answered from them, ask some pointed questions and get a feel for them.

“We had a young man, not this portal period but the portal period before that, come and visited us. We were doing research as he got here. He was a really good player. He would have been a starter for us, and he's starting right now at the school that he ended up going to. But as we dove into him more, we didn't feel like he would be a great fit for our locker room and for our team in the way we do things. So we pulled off of him, called his agent, told him this wasn't going to work.

“We feel like we can look back and say we've done a good job with that part of it. We brought guys in the program that fit. Very few haven't fit. We tell our players when they interact with them, if you don't feel like this guy's a fit for us, because you know how we do things, then you need to come tell us that. We put a lot of stock in what our players will tell us when they're able to interact with these guys.”

Becoming Jayhawks General Manager in 2021

Rob has had a very extensive career, starting in 1988 as an assistant at Alabama. He has since been an assistant at the Arizona Wildcards, Tight End coach at Wisconsin, a wide receiver coach at Notre Dame as well as being a Head Coach at Akron and assistant head coach at the University of Buffalo.

He was then named General Manager of the Jayhawks in 2021, eight years after being the wide receivers coach at the University. This was also the same year that Leipold was named head coach.

Speaking to the Touchdown’s Simon Carroll about how his time in the GM role has been.

“Well, that's a that's a great question. It is. When we originally came here in May of 2021, I think the thought was that Kansas had been really down, so the more help I could give Coach Leipold, the more help I could give him in taking things off his plate for the running of the football program the better, the quicker we can get this thing going in the right direction.

“Then then the NIL rule passed that could allow you guys to earn compensation for their names and likeness. So that added a component to my job that was different. But then with the ability to share revenue now with our athletes, have a cap, and ability to get above the cap, it has shaped my job in a way that I never thought it would, to be able to, really kind of look at, study the NFL quite a bit, and look at what works in the NFL.

“The NFL really knows what they're doing. The more I researched them, the more I found out how smart they are. So my job, it's changed dramatically, I think, evolved in five years. I am a cap manager. I'm a contract negotiator, besides an evaluator. When it comes to the personnel side of it, our roster side of it, how we put together a team, that has dramatically, dramatically changed.”

The relationship between Ianello and Leipold stems back further than just their time together in Kansas. Speaking to content creator American TJ, he spoke of their relationship, how it has grown and whether this helps when evaluating players and making decisions.

“Coach Leipold, Lance and I go back to 1991 at the University of Wisconsin, when we were on the staff there for Coach Alvarez, who's in the College Football Hall. Fame. Of anybody on our staff. I know him the longest, “I think there's a real trust there. I appreciate Lance's part with me to the area that he's entrusted me, but there's got to be good communication between myself and the head football coach. That's critical. And having a good vision, a vision for what you're looking for. And I think our backgrounds coming up under Coach Alvarez have allowed that. We stayed connected over the years, before I went to work with him at Buffalo. We stayed connected and have stayed in touch over those years. I think there's a trust there, myself with him, and him with me and I think we kind of grew up in a little bit of same philosophies of how you build a team, based upon our background with Coach Alvarez. So I think that all makes it makes it work well with us.”

2025 saw a change in the NFL as the league overhauled what is being known as K-Ball. This has allowed teams to prepare 60 special kicking balls rather than three freshly unboxed ones.

This has seen longer field goals, evident by Cam Little kicking the two longest fields goals, both in the 2025 season.

BBC 5 Live’s Anthony Wooton asked Ianello, who has spent time at Wimbledon, about the change in NFL kicking, as well as whether he prefers Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner. Rob also discussed one of their players who could be of particular interest to the Wembley audience.

‘I'm Italian by nature. I'm born Italian, so I got to go with Sinner. My wife likes Alcatraz. I got to see Alcaraz play on centre court and that was amazing. Djokovic is one that I've started to really kind of become so fond of since Wimbledon. What he does with that racket, if he was 20 years younger, nobody would beat him. I mean, it's amazing to me what he has done in his career. They play every other day they got to win six games to win one of these tournaments. It's amazing to me what they do and how they do it. So, I've become a real fan of Djokovic since, since, since Wimbledon.

“I think they put helium in the football, first of all, but I just think that through strength training, and development, I think they're getting stronger. You don't have any more of the place kickers that kind of look like me a little bit. They're athletes. They've done other sports. They've come up and probably started kicking earlier in their lifetime. So they really have developed a strength level to them, and they take the strength training and conditioning probably more serious maybe they did 15 years ago. To me, that's allowed them to just be really good at their craft and to be able to kick this ball further and further.

“The NFL, I'm astonished sometimes, whenever get a chance to watch it, they have no qualms about kicking a 58-yard field goal. It's amazing to me so but I think the onset of more commitment on the specialist part to strength training and conditioning, maybe doing it longer has allowed them to develop even further and have more distance on their kicks.

“Martin Cunningham, who joined us from Michigan State, his father is UK citizen and all of his family is back in the UK. So he's going to be buying a lot of tickets, you know, for the game here when they come. So that was a neat conversation point when he came and visited us, and we sat down with the Mum and Dad.”

Quarterback Jalon Daniels is preparing to go into the NFL Draft, after five seasons with the Jayhawks. This comes after over 9,000 total yards and 67 touchdowns, including career highs in these categories in 2025.

The Touchdown’s Simon Carroll asked Rob about the NIL and being able to keep players such as Daniels within their programme.

“Yeah, I think that the number one thing, you know, the top recruiting tool you have, is retention.

‘You want to be able to retain your good players. That's so critical. I think the environment we've created here for our team, allows guys to want to stay here. They get treated well. They're getting treated fairly. They're able to grow not only on the field, but off the field.

“The value of their degree from University of Kansas is a great place to get a degree from, and we emphasize that with our team. So I think the players feel appreciated number one and foremost and makes place more of a place Kansas where guys want to stay as opposed to guys want to leave.

“Then I think that we have tried to be proactive in in those guys retention and talking to their families early, maybe not talking to the young man as early to distract him from the season, but talking to their families or talking to their representatives early in order to get out in front of this, so that we could retain them, and in today's world, reach an agreement where he would, you know, stay here.

“If you look at some of the NFL teams, the [Philadelphia] Eagles have been one that if they got a guy, they got a guy. They're not going to get to that contract ending. They're going to extend him there before the season's over and they've been a great model for that. We've taken a little bit of that approach last year in retaining guys.

“I did sit down like his family and his representative, and a one-on-one. When he came in for a game, and Jalen was not involved in that, but we were able to sit down and talk through some things ahead of time and some others were involved in those conversations on our staff. That allowed us to get out in front of that, get him to feel great about staying here Kansas and doing things.

“And I know when Devin Neal the year before, you know, one of the things was the degree, you know. But then, when you sit down and say, if you stay at Kansas, here are some of the things you can achieve. You could become the all-time leading rusher. Here's how many yards you have to go. You can lead it. You become the all-time touchdown scorer. That was kind of laid out to him, you can do these things before you ever got to the financial component of what it would be and I think those resonate with guys. We’ve tried to create an environment that players who want to stay here as opposed to leave, and I think that's the number one thing that Lance has done.”

Andy Davies

Rob Ianello speaks to media ahead of Union jack classic

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