photo by: Chance Parker/Journal-World photo

Athletic Director Travis Goff speaks at the press conference following KU's release of new plans to renovate David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium on Aug. 15, 2023.

Kansas athletic director Travis Goff announced the signing of Bill Self’s amended lifetime contract Tuesday after, to hear Self and Goff tell it, about seven months of both substantive discussions and legal formalities.

“When numerous attorneys are involved,” Self said wryly Wednesday, “sometimes things don’t move as quick as what they normally wish they could in some ways.”

But with the university having eventually secured its Hall of Fame basketball coach for what he described as “the back three or four” holes on the 18-hole golf course of his career, the discussion Wednesday turned to his less tenured but still extremely popular football counterpart, Lance Leipold.

“I want these two guys to coach until the wheels fall off, literally, in both cases,” Goff said, “and we want them of course to coach right here in Kansas until the wheels fall off, until it’s time to shut it down.”

Could that mean another contract for Leipold, who was hired in April 2021 and extended, in November 2022, through 2029?

“The indications obviously in year three are just incredible,” Goff said. “We demonstrated a strong commitment a year ago, but that doesn’t mean you just sit idle, doesn’t mean you get comfortable, and ultimately I think we’ve got a chance to have, and maybe we already do, have the two best in the country when you take into account men’s basketball and football coaches.”

Goff said that with the football team “midstream” in its home stretch, it isn’t the ideal time to have conversations about such matters with Leipold — though he did add that “If you can avoid it, you want to avoid it, but you don’t avoid it at the risk of misaligning.”

The KU football coach, who has now made his team bowl eligible in consecutive seasons for just the second time in its history and sealed its first winning record since 2008, will be a hot commodity on the coaching market for any marquee team with an opening.

Leipold has said in various venues throughout the season that he and his wife don’t want to move their son, and that “You can never say never in this game because you never know exactly what happens internally or externally, but it’s our expectation that we finish my career at the University of Kansas,” as he put it on the Austin American-Statesman’s “On Second Thought” podcast in September. He also didn’t leave for Nebraska or Wisconsin last season. But that hasn’t halted suggestions by fans and pundits — perhaps most notably The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman — that he might be a strong candidate for the Michigan State job this year.

Even another extension may not halt those rumors; the last one apparently didn’t.

“I would be shocked if his name wasn’t bubbling up one way or the other in just about every opening,” Goff said, adding that “anybody with half a brain … knows that what he’s doing and what he’s done here is incredible.”

Administrative notes

Goff was in Allen Fieldhouse Wednesday not just to address Self’s new contract, but to lead the semiannual meeting of the Kansas Athletics board of directors. Here’s some of what the board discussed in its first meeting since approving a $127 million annual budget in June:

• The Kansas volleyball team, which currently ranks No. 14 in the country, could be in position to host first- and second-round NCAA Tournament matches. Those could take place Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. KU deputy AD for sports administration Nicole Corcoran noted that the women’s basketball game on Nov. 30 could move earlier in the day, while the men’s basketball game on Dec. 1 would stay put.

• The search for a replacement for Mark Francis, the longtime KU soccer coach who retired after the season concluded, is underway and will include listening sessions with current student-athletes as well as engagement of team alumnae.

• Goff said the football game against Texas Tech this Saturday is trending toward a sellout in the next couple days, with the Kansas State game the following weekend not far behind.