KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In Rome on Wednesday morning, Mark Mangino went to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City for a Papal Audience with Pope Francis.
“I got within 10-12 feet of him!” he said via text message.
Even amid an amazing trip, though, Mangino wanted to take a moment to convey his thoughts about the 3-0 start by Kansas football in its second season under coach Lance Leipold.
Entering its game against Duke (3-0) at 11 a.m. Saturday at sold-out Booth Memorial Stadium, Kansas’ three wins already matches the school’s most in a season since Mangino was forced out in 2009.
From the perspective of the man who engineered more wins at Kansas (50) than anyone since Doc Kennedy’s 52 in football’s Jurassic Era of the early 1900s, one particular point about this renaissance resonated enough that Mangino punctuated his other thoughts that day with one last text:
“I’m happy for my players,” Mangino wrote. “They can look at the football program with pride (again). Many of them told me they (had become) embarrassed and disappointed. They thought all of their hard work was for naught.”
Not now. And maybe not for the foreseeable future under Leipold … though the prospect of his being poached by another program is something Kansas has to gird itself to handle.
If Leipold’s tenure has some early echoes of Mangino’s success (“His teams are smart, disciplined and tough,” Mangino said), his presence in Lawrence is tethered both to Mangino and fellow former KU coach Glen Mason — the third-winningest coach (47) in school history after taking over a program that had been 4-17-1 the two seasons before his arrival in 1988 with what he recalls as 51 scholarship players.
For one thing, then-new athletic director Travis Goff wisely reached out to Mangino and Mason for feedback about the nature of the job and its past impediments as he put together a search committee.
“It helped me confirm my assumptions when all three of us were speaking the same language,” Goff said Friday.
For another, Leipold sought out each of them as well when he was pondering whether to leave Buffalo for KU.
Leipold “asked a lot of questions. Very inquisitive,” Mangino wrote. “I told him to stick to his core beliefs. He (knew) it was a tough job. But (he was) prepared to tackle it.”
Even watching from afar since then, Mangino sees the signs that Leipold “obviously is a stickler for detail” and that “his teams are smart, disciplined and tough.”
In a phone interview earlier this week, Mason recalled telling Leipold that the “upside potential is great” because of the school and Lawrence itself even as he made blunt points:
“You’ve got to do a better job of coaching than the other guy; you’ve got to do a better job of developing players than the other guy,” he recalled saying. “Because you’re not going to win a lot of (recruiting) battles against the historical name schools, if you get my drift. …
“But there’s still a lot of football players out there. And you get ‘em and you develop ‘em.”
Mason knew enough about Leipold’s style and substance, though, to know those words would be no discouragement to him.
He had begun to get to know Leipold in 2015. At the time, Mason was working for the Big Ten Network and prepping for Leipold’s second game at Buffalo on the road at Penn State.
While interviewing him leading up to the game, Mason found himself curious about why Leipold left Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater (where he won six national titles) for Buffalo.
“I was so impressed with what he said … ‘I really wanted to test myself at the next level,’ ” Mason recalled.
So Mason began to follow him closely in the years to come … and constantly saw him passing the test with teams that were dynamic, physical and fundamentally sound.
As a self-described “big fan,” Mason found himself repeatedly telling people in positions of influence that Leipold was the guy he’d hire. Because he’s a coach, through and through. Someone who loves to coach and not just being the coach, as Mason put it.
Leipold could apply that anywhere, Mason said, but maybe it matters more in some situations than others.
“Especially for a program that needed to be fixed,” he said. “You know what I mean?”
Safe to say few needed to be fixed as much as Kansas.
So Mason was gratified that Goff called and made for the right audience at the right time. Goff, he said, “should be commended.”
Not for calling him but for how he viewed KU’s needs in the wake of churning through four ill-considered coaches in just a decade.
“Too often, if you watch, athletic directors are more interested in winning the press conference than they are in hiring the right guy,” Mason said. “And I’m sure that when Lance was named, there were a lot of people who said, ‘Who!? We could have gotten the (top assistant) from Notre Dame … (or) from Alabama.’ Or whatever it may be.
“But (Goff) said I ain’t worried about the press conference; I’m worried about where this program is going to be two, three, four, five years down the road.”
Shortly after the hire was made last year, Mason told The Kansas City Star’s Jesse Newell he was thrilled about it.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a home-run hire,” he said then. “I’d think it’s a grand-slam hire.”
Asked if he had foreseen this, Mason laughed and said this exceeded anything he’d envisioned. He figured at this stage we’d simply just see signs of a team that is much better-coached and consistently playing hard instead of 3-0 with two road wins and third in the nation in scoring.
The only downside is that Leipold, 58, already is the object of speculation for higher-profile jobs such as the vacant one at Nebraska.
“You’d have to be naive if you were the powers that be at KU not to realize that people are going to say, ‘Well, heck, if he can do that at KU, why couldn’t he do it at our place?’ ” said Mason, who was hired away from KU by Minnesota in 1996.
He added, “When you look at the debacle with the hires that KU has had (recently), the money that they’ve just washed down the drain, I think it would be in their best interests even at this point” to enhance Leipold’s contract.
To help keep the renewed pride from feeling all for naught again soon.
