photo by: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

A sold-out crowd of college football fans pack Memorial Stadium during an NCAA college football game between Illinois and Kansas on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Champaign, Ill.

Champaign, Ill. — While Kansas guard Michael Ford Jr. was interested in the University of Illinois growing up, when it came time for his recruitment, he was “a MAC guy.”

Ford, a native of Homewood, Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs, didn’t garner significant power-conference interest out of high school and ended up going to Buffalo, indeed, in the Mid-American Conference, from which he followed Lance Leipold and his staff to KU in 2021.

Now in his fourth season as a starter for the rising Jayhawks, Ford had the chance to make it back to his home state for his 38th career start.

While 30 of his relatives were expected at Memorial Stadium for the occasion, Ford downplayed the event, saying he wanted to “keep the main thing the main thing” and focus on his teammates ahead of the game.

And any perceived recruiting slight by the Illini growing up, he said, was no different from the way any other school had slighted him.

“I don’t really think about it,” he said. “I have a chip on my shoulder every game I play because a lot of these teams didn’t recruit me.”

Ford is one of three Illinoisans on KU’s roster, along with fellow guard Darrell Simmons Jr., who is from Belleville in the Greater St. Louis area, and freshman cornerback Austin Alexander, from Hazel Crest just to the west of Homewood, who was the top player at his position in the state in the 2024 class.

Communication is key

Saturday night also marked the second go-round for the Jayhawks with the new in-helmet communication system for coaches that the NCAA legalized in the offseason. Middle linebacker Cornell Wheeler gets defensive calls and guidance from coordinator Brian Borland, but the process of getting information to quarterback Jalon Daniels on offense is a bit more complicated.

Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes coaches from the sideline, unlike his predecessor Andy Kotelnicki. Grimes gives his play call to Jim Zebrowski, the quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator up in the box, who in turn tells Daniels what to choose from his wristband.

“And so it frees me up to do a little bit more on the sideline,” Grimes said, noting that Zebrowski has a better view of the play clock and the field at large.

For Grimes, the choice to coach from the field ultimately comes down to what he considers his greatest strengths in the profession: the relationship component, the ability to “look in a player’s eyes and see if he’s in need of a challenge or a hug.”

“I’ve been in the box and felt frustrated seeing it down there and not being able to manage it the way that I felt like I could if I was down there,” he said.

As for how the coaches arrived at that particular collaborative arrangement, Grimes said it came about almost by accident as KU was simulating the in-helmet communication during fall camp. He found it difficult to juggle the Jayhawks’ large, two-sided call sheet and the walkie-talkie the coaches were using to emulate the system.

They ended up finding the setup that “allows all of us to kind of lean into what we do best,” Grimes said.

Like father, like daughter

In the spring, Leipold joked about how his daughter Lindsey had opted to enter the coaching profession despite his efforts “to tell her what that’s like sometimes.”

He had also lamented that he wouldn’t be able to see much of her work with the Florida Gulf Coast volleyball team, as its season overlaps with football’s

However, over the long weekend following KU’s Thursday night victory over Lindenwood, Leipold had the chance to head down to Florida and watch the Eagles in action. FGCU went 2-1 in three matches played at Alico Arena in Fort Myers between Aug. 30 and Aug. 31.

Lindsey Leipold played four years of collegiate volleyball at Stetson and later received her MBA from Lamar.

This and that

Illinois sold out Memorial Stadium for Saturday night’s game, the first time it had reached its capacity of more than 60,000 since a 48-23 loss to Mitch Trubisky and North Carolina during the 2016 season.

The Illini also wore helmets with an underlined “Illinois” design as part of their celebration of the 100th anniversary of Memorial Stadium. They previously used a similar design from 1989 to 2012.