KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A conversation with Kansas football coach Lance Leipold is 15 minutes old, most of it rehashing a recently completed breakthrough season, when the topic turns to the man most responsible for it. He is sitting behind a desk, a mural of KU players decorating the windows over his shoulder and a pair of oversized white, red and blue Adidas shoes stashed on the table in front.
“But this shouldn’t be about me,” Leipold interrupts. “It’s about the program.”
Except it is about the head coach, because you can’t tell the story of this program’s sudden, if not unexpected, resurgence without telling the story of its head coach. After all, others have sat in this very office — same chair, same desk, same backdrop — only to take part in a much different conversation. And at a much different time of year.
