photo by: Photo courtesy AutoZone Liberty Bowl

The Kansas football team exits the team plane after arriving in Memphis, Tennessee, for this week's Liberty Bowl against Arkansas.

It may have been 14 years since the Kansas football program sent a team to a bowl game, but this is not exactly new territory for KU coach Lance Leipold.

During his six seasons at Buffalo, Leipold led the Bulls to bowl appearances in his final three seasons, with wins in 2019 and 2020 and a loss in 2018.

Then there’s his postseason experience at Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he led his teams to seven trips to the Division III national championship game, winning six of them.

So, yeah, the excitement around the program and campus and the community as a whole about the Jayhawks heading to this week’s Liberty Bowl — 4:30 p.m. kickoff Wednesday vs. Arkansas in Memphis on ESPN — is new. But Leipold and a good chunk of his coaching staff were more than ready to guide this group through the four weeks of prep work that has now been reduced to less than 72 hours.

After two full weeks of recruiting for the coaches and developmental practices featuring many of KU’s youngest players who did not receive many reps this season, the Jayhawks (6-6) have been focused almost entirely on Arkansas for the past week.

Last Wednesday, at his signing day press conference, Leipold said KU broke the latter stages of bowl prep “into two four-practice segments, like we do during the season.”

“Now it’s the ones where we really kind of hone in on it,” Leipold said. “We’ve been introducing Arkansas and game-planned through that.”

One of the two segments ended last Wednesday and the second began last Thursday, with travel time and the Christmas holiday cutting into the second session.

The Jayhawks arrived in Memphis on Sunday evening, roughly 72 hours before Wednesday’s kickoff.

It wasn’t an entirely new experience for everyone on the team. KU’s current roster, which has been updated online to reflect the recent transfer portal departures, included 17 players who, in one way or another already had experienced a bowl game in his career.

That count, which makes up 15% of the Jayhawks’ roster, did not include any junior college postseason experience or that of players like starting offensive lineman Dominic Puni, who has playoff experience at a lower level.

It did, however, included quite a few players who played a huge role in getting Kansas back to a bowl game with their strong play this season. That list included: Running back Ky Thomas, defensive lineman Eddie Wilson, offensive linemen Mike Novitsky and Michael Ford Jr., linebackers Rich Miller, Craig Young and Lorenzo McCaskill, cornerback Kalon Gervin, quarterback Jason Bean and edge rusher Lonnie Phelps Jr.

In an interview with reporters shortly after the Jayhawks’ arrival at the team hotel on Sunday night, linebacker Rich Miller illustrated his experience in bowl games.

“When we were on the plane, I told everybody, ‘All the practices are over; now the fun starts,'” Miller said. “This is what we worked for all season and now it’s time (for it) to pay off.”

A program first

Wednesday’s game will be the first in the history of the KU program to be played on Dec. 28.

For a program that has appeared in just a dozen bowls all-time, that makes plenty of sense. But it’s still notable because it underscores KU’s unfamiliarity with playing games in late December.

The Jayhawks enter their first postseason game in more than a decade with an all-time record of 594-675-58, including an 8-16 mark under Leipold, who is 154-55 all-time as a head coach.

KU is seeking to win its seventh game for the first time in a single season since 2008, when the program finished 8-5. KU is 6-6 all-time in its dozen bowl appearances, including an 0-1 record at the Liberty Bowl. The Jayhawks are 2-0 all-time against the Arkansas Razorbacks, but the two schools have not met on the gridiron since 1907.

KU vs. the SEC

The Jayhawks enter this one with a 63-71-10 all-time record against teams from the Southeastern Conference.

It’s been a while since the Jayhawks matched up with a program from the powerhouse conference, not counting Missouri or Texas A&M, of course, which were both in the Big 12 the last time the Jayhawks played them.

KU’s last meeting with an SEC team came during Week 2 of the 1988 season, when the Jayhawks traveled to Auburn and lost 56-7.

Kansas has played multiple games against teams from the four other Power 5 conferences since that meeting with Auburn.

KU also played Auburn in the 1987 season, losing 49-0 at Auburn in the season opener that year.

Prior to that, Kansas played SEC school Vanderbilt during the 1984 and 1985 seasons and SEC program Kentucky in the 1981 and 1982 seasons. The Jayhawks were 2-1-1 in those four games, with one win over each program and a 13-all tie at Kentucky in 1982.

Jayhawks on exclusive lists

KU quarterback Jalon Daniels, who returned as the team’s starter after recovering from a shoulder injury that kept him out for several weeks during the regular season, may have generated the most individual buzz among the Jayhawks’ this season.

But a couple of his teammates accomplished things that only a few people in all of college football did during the 2022 season.

Interestingly enough, Bean, Daniels’ back-up, was one of just five QBs in all of Power 5 to have back-to-back games of 250-plus yards passing and four touchdown passes this season. He joined Heisman Trophy finalists Caleb Williams, who won the award, and C.J. Stroud, along with Will Rogers, of Mississippi State and Drake Maye, of North Carolina.

One of the favorite targets of both Bean and Daniels, junior tight end Mason Fairchild, also landed in exclusive company.

Fairchild was one of five tight ends in all of college football to have 100-plus yards and two or more touchdowns in the same game this season. That came in a Kansas loss at Oklahoma on Oct. 15.