photo by: Chance Parker/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas freshman Isaiah Marshall during the first day of spring practice at the practice field on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Lawrence.

The Kansas football staff wanted to foster an even more competitive environment over the course of the team’s unusually long eight-week offseason.

So it started issuing citations to its players.

On Feb. 28, early-enrollee freshman cornerback Jalen Todd posted on social media a picture of a tongue-in-cheek “speeding ticket” he had received from strength coach Matt Gildersleeve for running 21.03 miles per hour.

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Other players who obtained such certificates included freshman quarterback Isaiah Marshall (“One day better,” he wrote on X) and redshirt freshman wide receiver Keaton Kubecka (“We moving”).

The speeding ticket tactic was part of a broader motivational effort “to measure and publish and award and do those kinds of things in everything we did,” Gildersleeve told reporters after the first day of spring practice Tuesday.

“They love it,” he added. “They’re all about it.”

Senior cornerback Cobee Bryant said he had gotten one — “I kind of feel fast, you know” — while wide receiver Luke Grimm lamented that he fell 0.01 miles per hour short of the goal.

“I got to write my name on the speed limit,” he said, “but you have to (get) 21 to get a speeding ticket.”

With quarterback Jason Bean gone, Gildersleeve said that backup safety Mason Ellis has made a case as the team’s speediest player thanks to “tremendous development this offseason.”

“He wasn’t two, three or even four this time last year, but he’s been our fastest guy,” he said, adding that Todd, fellow early enrollees Harry Stewart III and Damani Maxson, and veteran wide receiver Quentin Skinner have also recorded good times.

The gamification of the uncommonly long offseason wasn’t limited to straight-line speed. Gildersleeve mentioned that KU has a “heavy load entrance” sign where a player gets to put his name if he can push 400 pounds of weight 10 yards in five seconds on a Prowler weight sled.

“The first time we did it it was just one, it was (reserve lineman) DK Sterns,” Gildersleeve said. “And now we had 18 guys total sign it by the end of the eight weeks.”

The strength coach did say that as a result of these sorts of incentives, he finds it harder to get players to stop working as hard as they can “all the time every day in training,” and rest remains an important part of the conditioning process.

“It’s like I got to hide some of the weights in the weight room now,” he said, “which I can tell you two years ago that wasn’t a problem, guys.”

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