photo by: Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World

Head coach Lance Leipold, center, and the Kansas football team go through spring practice on Thursday, March 6, 2025, in Lawrence.

The Kansas football team will not host a Spring Showcase this season, a KU Athletics spokesperson said on Thursday morning.

KU cited logistical conflicts at Rock Chalk Park with other events during the weekend the Spring Showcase was set to take place. According to a spring practice schedule some KU staffers had circulated on social media, the event was set to occur on April 11.

Rock Chalk Park would have been required as a host site for the second straight year because of the ongoing construction at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which KU administrators have frequently reiterated is on time and on budget for its scheduled debut on Aug. 23 for the Jayhawks’ week-zero season opener against Fresno State.

In prior years, the Spring Showcase featured a mixture of drills and some 11-on-11 scrimmage action over the course of about an hour of football. In place of this year’s event, KU intends to hold a “Fan Appreciation Day” with details yet to come, the spokesperson said.

KU now becomes the latest of a slew of power-conference football programs to cancel their public-facing spring football events, albeit with various reasons, though many are construction-related. Nebraska coach Matt Rhule, for his part, has been vocal about his concern that other teams will see his players perform in a spring game and try to lure them away via the transfer portal.

KU coach Lance Leipold had been asked earlier in March about the ongoing trend of spring-game cancellations.

“It seems to be where it’s going,” he said. “We haven’t done a ton. We’ve done pretty much our same scrimmage format as we’ve done since we’ve been here, really since I’ve been a head coach with spring ball. Right now we plan to trend that way. I don’t see us increasing that. I do see it appears they could be fading away for various reasons.”

He said one pending concern was that new roster limits, which the House v. NCAA settlement will impose on football programs beginning next year, will make it difficult to stage such events.