photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Journal-World Photo

Kansas head coach Lance Leipold looks to the video board after a touchdown by BYU on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023, at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.

The way the trajectory of Kansas football history has gone, Jayhawk fans will have the memory of any bowl win (or appearance, even) firmly lodged in their brains.

BYU’s visit this week may have dredged up the memory of a particularly prominent game, the 1992 Aloha Bowl that saw KU beat the Cougars for its first postseason win in 31 years. That matchup was the only meeting between the two schools prior to Saturday.

The Aloha Bowl saw the Jayhawks pull out all the stops, including a 74-yard trick-play touchdown pass from Matt Gay to Rodney Harris, three sacks from Dana Stubblefield and a game-winning field goal by Dan Eichloff, in order to escape with a 23-20 victory. Kwamie Lassiter, the father of current KU cornerback Kwinton Lassiter and BYU receiver Darius Lassiter, led the Jayhawks with 12 tackles that day.

That was the first of two high points of the Glen Mason era, before the Jayhawks went 10-2 and beat UCLA in the same bowl three years later, finishing the year with a top-10 ranking in one of the best seasons in program history.

Saturday’s game found KU and BYU in drastically different circumstances, facing off as league rivals, as BYU, a bit of a nomad over the years that just spent more than a decade as an independent, played the fifth game in its history as a first-time member of a new conference. And indeed, KU displayed a highlight reel from the Aloha Bowl on its video board during the first half Saturday to commemorate the occasion.

Giving back

BYU fans travel in droves, and they certainly made their presence felt in David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium as a sizable portion of the sellout crowd Saturday afternoon. (With a Sunday home game for the Kansas City Chiefs, led by BYU alumnus Andy Reid, the Deseret News called this weekend “an ultimate BYU football road trip” back in May.)

But the away fans also set out to make an impact beyond the confines of the KU facility. Last week when BYU played in Arkansas, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors the university, donated 40,000 pounds of goods to the St. James Missionary Baptist Church food pantry to kick-start a food drive with fans at a tailgate on the day of the away game. Local TV station 5News noted that the tradition dates back to a 2019 donation of coats during a BYU road game at Tennessee.

The charitable giving made its way to Lawrence this week for a tailgate at Watson Park, in which BYU fans collected children’s books for the use of Lawrence Public Schools Native American Student Services. Visitors were encouraged to purchase books featuring Indigenous characters from a lengthy Amazon wish list.

Kenneth St. Pierre, the Native American Student Services coordinator, told the Journal-World during the week that the unit had already accumulated 150 books in advance of the weekend drive. As St. Pierre noted, plenty of other BYU business took place ahead of the weekend too, with NASS holding a literacy-themed event for students at its Louisiana Street building featuring BYU’s mascot and cheerleaders, Haskell Indian Nations University athletes reading to kids, performances and more on Friday night.

Eyes on age

KU coach Lance Leipold, who is not exactly known for providing bulletin-board material to opponents, created a minor outcry in the BYU community during his press conference Monday when his opening observation about the Cougars was that they have size, maturity and experience thanks to their average age of “22 years old or something.”

Some BYU players are older than their peers in college athletics because they put college on hold to serve Latter-day Saint missions as young adults. More than 60 athletes on the BYU football roster have served missions.

The average age of this year’s roster is in fact 21.7, so Leipold wasn’t far off. Though specific age statistics are hard to come by for most other teams, college football in general has gotten older, at least anecdotally, due to the extra year of eligibility administered to players due to COVID-19, which would seem to narrow the gap between BYU and its competition. But opposing coaches and players have frequently remarked on the advantages’ of BYU’s age over the years and the most aggrieved Cougar fans on social media seemed to be reacting to that frequency more so than the content of Leipold’s statement.

This and that

Sept. 23 is the earliest juncture at which Kansas has sold out a football game since it faced Duke on Sept. 19, 2009.

KU wore red uniforms for the first time since it hosted TCU for ESPN’s “College GameDay” in its sixth game of 2022.

BYU tackle Caleb Etienne returned to the state of Kansas, where he previously spent one year at Fort Scott Community College and another at Butler Community College. He also started for Oklahoma State at left tackle when the Cowboys played in Lawrence in 2022 (the game that clinched a bowl berth for KU).

This story has been updated to correct the name of Dana Stubblefield.