photo by: Photo courtesy of KU Athletics

Kansas receivers coach and passing game coordinator Emmett Jones coaches from the sideline in this file photo from the 2020 season. KU named Jones the football team's interim head coach on March 11, 2021.

The latest search for the next head football coach at the University of Kansas didn’t conclude with a promotion for Emmett Jones, who led the Jayhawks on an interim basis throughout the spring. Nevertheless, the receivers coach didn’t hesitate to stick around when Lance Leipold took over the program and offered him that chance.

“Like I tell everybody, I want to be a part of the change,” Jones said of the driving force behind him staying with the Jayhawks.

“I want to be a part of KU going the right direction as far as being a contender in the Big 12,” Jones added. “I want to etch my name in the cement when it comes to that.”

Originally hired by former head coach Les Miles, Jones is now in his third year as a KU assistant. As Leipold assembled his first coaching staff at KU, he invited Jones, cornerbacks coach Chevis Jackson, defensive line coach Kwahn Drake, running backs coach Jonathan Wallace and special teams coordinator Jake Schoonover to remain in on-field roles.

Leipold thought Jones and the other assistants who were retained shared a common mindset.

“Their desire that they wanted to be here and be a part of this was number one,” Leipold said.

For the former Buffalo head coach and the assistants who followed him to KU, some unknowns still exist as they get acclimated to a new program. Leipold said they’re relying on many of the returning staff members as they find their bearings, and that Jones has done “an outstanding job” for the program through this transition.

“He did a great job of running this team in the spring, and (now Jones is) trying to take those things and evaluate it to what we want to do this coming fall,” Leipold shared.

Throughout spring practices, as the coaching search kept the future in doubt, Jones often received praise from the players for his leadership. Several Jayhawks openly campaigned for him to become the permanent head coach.

Jones said once spring ball wrapped up and Leipold was hired, players further expressed their appreciation to him.

“I’ll never forget the 2021 spring at the University of Kansas,” Jones said, while remembering the scene on the field at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium shortly after the spring game concluded. “They all came and hugged and said they were pretty much thankful for the opportunity.”

The gratitude continued to flow in the weeks since, Jones shared. He said when he’s out around town, stopping by a store or restaurant, it seems there’s always a stranger coming up to him to say thanks for what the staff accomplished this spring.

Through a potentially volatile stretch for the program in recent months, Jones played it cool when he was the interim head coach. And after the fact he maintained that beneath his stoic exterior his mind wasn’t racing about how the search and the hire would play out.

“Shoot, man, the only thing I really just focused on was I put the head coach hat on and just tackled one day at a time. I wasn’t worried about uncertainty,” Jones said. “I was just trying my best to make the staff better, make the players better and bring everybody together.”

Once Leipold was hired, it meant a lot to Jones that the new head coach wanted to keep him on the staff. As much as Jones says he loves Lawrence and the university, it was his connection with the players that made him especially grateful.

“I’m definitely not a fan, not a believer in recruiting guys and then leaving them. I’m not that kind of coach. So I wanted to stick it out with those guys if I could, if that opportunity was presented to me,” Jones said.

“I want to tough it out with them. At the same time, go through those tough days with them and absorb the good days that are coming ahead.”

Before meeting Leipold and getting a chance to work with him, Jones said he did his research on the former Buffalo and Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater head coach. When he learned about how Leipold turned around the UB program and had a dominant run, winning six titles, at Whitewater, Jones thought it would benefit him professionally to learn from Leipold and gain some of his new boss’s knowledge.

“I just want to continue to surround myself with good head coaches,” Jones said. “And his numbers and his records speak volumes about him.”