When Kansas lost Tulane transfer defensive tackle Tre’von McAlpine for the season to an ACL injury, it created opportunities for several other players in his position group to earn more playing time than they would have otherwise during the 2026 season. UAB transfer Eamon Smalls might be the most direct replacement for McAlpine, as an imposing nose tackle capable of controlling multiple gaps. Marcus Calvin is ...
When linebacker Jibreel Al-Amin first arrived at Kansas, he downloaded an app to track his calorie intake. At a certain point he forgot about the app entirely — he had to keep eating, whether he was hungry or not. Such is the life of a previously 200-pound linebacker attempting to bulk up in preparation for his first season at the power-conference level. “At past schools I definitely tried all the extra ...
The Kansas athletic department on Friday morning announced that it has hired Sam Strantz as its executive director of front office strategy and operations, a high-level position in which Strantz will oversee athlete compensation via revenue sharing and name, image and likeness payments. Strantz most recently served as the senior team counsel for the NBA’s Houston Rockets. He has an undergraduate degree from ...
With a new calendar layout and no Week 0 game this season — despite Kansas’ best efforts — the KU football schedule looks quite a bit different in 2026. The Jayhawks will open on Sept. 4, a full 12 days later than they did in 2025, and on a Friday rather than a Saturday. That’s made for a longer offseason than usual, and the schedule will go in some additional interesting directions when KU heads across ...
Melvin Council Jr. anticipates submitting another filing in his lawsuit seeking another year of collegiate eligibility, after the NCAA in its recent response broached “a number of issues … that we did not address” in previous arguments, Council’s lawyer Mark Oberstaedt said at a status conference in Douglas County court on Friday afternoon. Oberstaedt, a Philadelphia-based partner at law firm Archer ...
As long as DeAndre Harper has been playing competitive football, he’s been changing positions. By the time Harper was a second-team all-state lineman at Omaha North High School in Nebraska, he had already moved outside once, from guard as an underclassman to tackle as an upperclassman. As a freshman at Northwest Missouri State, he remained at tackle — only to move to guard during a redshirt year at KU. At ...