Kansas football director of sports performance Matt Gildersleeve talks with media members on Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at the Anderson Family Football Complex.

The first week that Matt Gildersleeve was in Lawrence, the Kansas football team’s new director of sports performance didn’t leave the facility without talking at length each night with his boss, head coach Lance Leipold, about their summer plans for a program in need of a reboot.

Though Gildersleeve already felt confident that he was on the same page as the man he spent the past two years working for at Buffalo, the two wanted to make sure the messages the Jayhawks will receive from the new regime in the weeks ahead land just right.

“How are we going to build relationships? How are we going to get the buy-in? How are we going to bring our system? What are we going to adjust?” Gildersleeve rattled off, while relating some of the topics of their discussions, which he said typically wrapped up at 9 or 10 p.m.

A point of emphasis through it all, the strength and conditioning coach shared, was to make sure their strategy wasn’t just a copy of what worked for them at Buffalo.

“What does Kansas need?” was what they wanted to be sure to address, he said. “What does it need us to be?”

They hope what they hashed out in those sessions proves to be the prologue to a sea change for a program that has lost 75% or more of its games every season since 2010.

As KU players return to campus this weekend, they’re about to learn what it’s like to be in a program led by Leipold. And much of their introduction to the new head coach’s structure and expectations will come via the guidance of Gildersleeve.

Leipold said due to the unique timing of when he took over the program, just as the Jayhawks wrapped up spring practices, Gildersleeve’s role will be “more crucial than ever.” That’s because a team’s strength coach, per NCAA rules, gets to spend more time with the players in the summer than the head coach and his assistants.

While working together at UB the past two years, Leipold said he found Gildersleeve does “a great job” with “getting to know players and bonding with them and instilling culture.” The head coach expects that to happen in June and July for the Jayhawks, before the start of preseason practices.

Gildersleeve said his first interaction with the Jayhawks in a team setting will come on Sunday, when he will begin with what he called the program’s “cultural installment.” Another such installment meeting is set for Monday, followed by the team’s first summer workout on Tuesday.

A former tight end at Division III Mount Union, Gildersleeve said what’s in store for the players in their introduction to the Leipold era at KU will be as instructional as it is challenging.

“They’re going to learn that I’m a teacher,” he said of what the Jayhawks will soon discover about him and why he loves his job. “At the end of the day, this generation of young man, they want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing. And that helps with the buy-in. If I wasn’t doing this I’d probably be teaching a college course, or teaching at a high school.”

As they go through the rigors of various strength and conditioning work, Gildersleeve said the players will be expected to make progressions as they learn, and he will be sure to explain how every aspect of what they are doing this summer translates onto the football field.

“They’re going to get coached, and they’re going to get frigging developed,” he added. “So there’s going to be a very high standard to what we do and how we’re going to do it.”

In his own preparation for learning more about the players he will soon be teaching, Gildersleeve said he wanted to begin with building relationships. Already he has called every player on the roster, and even spoken on the phone with a lot of the Jayhawks’ parents, too.

Because every player in the program was recruited by a different staff, he said he wanted to “re-recruit” each player.

“Before you talk about any X’s and O’s or nutrition or training,” Gildersleeve said, “those are the important things first.”

As the early stages of the program’s transition continue this summer, the team’s director of sports performance expects he will ask the players to do some things from accountability and discipline standpoints that they may not yet be used to.

Still, Gildersleeve said his initial discussions with the players reenforced for him that they will meet these redefined expectations head on.

“Every man wants accountability, they want discipline and they want structure,” he said. “I think it’s almost human nature to want those things.”