photo by: Kansas Athletics

Bryce Foster

When Bryce Foster was at Texas A&M for his first three years of college, it was usually impossible for him to take part in spring practices for both football and track and field, because both sports worked out in the afternoon.

“It was really difficult,” he recalled on Tuesday. “Whenever I could get out there at A&M the best I could, I would, but it would just be so rare for that to happen with the weight training and stuff like that that we had to do for track as well.”

Now, going through his first full offseason as a member of the Kansas football program after arriving in Lawrence late last summer, the center Foster is juggling his pair of varsity sports as best he can, trying to “flip my switch” at midday, as he puts it.

“I get here in the morning, do everything with football and then grab lunch, and then any little time I have, I’ll spend in the film room with the guys for 20, 25 minutes,” he said, “and then I have to hit the road to go to (Rock Chalk Park) to train for track until about 3 o’clock, and then usually by that time my day is done.”

Asked if he was in track shape, Foster, a thrower who fell one place short of qualifying for NCAA nationals last season in the shot put, said, “I don’t know what shape I’m in, but I’m in some kind of shape.”

It’s a different shape, in any event, than he was last season.

As part of an offseason of change that sees him not only balancing the two sports in a new way, he’s also trying to become more of a leader for the Jayhawks in his final year of college football (as one of KU’s few returning starters) — and he looks physically different, too.

Listed at 330 pounds when he arrived at KU, and playing at 322 or 323 for most of the 2024 season, he said he could “kind of feel myself getting super tired, almost lackadaisical,” and set out to lose weight for 2025.

Now, he’s down at 305.

“I feel really good, feel way different,” he said. “Kind of weird what 15 pounds can do, I don’t know.”

The accompanying off-field transformation has been another kind of challenge for Foster. With well-respected starters like Bryce Cabeldue, Michael Ford Jr. and Logan Brown gone, the weight of leadership falls on Foster, right guard Kobe Baynes and to some extent young left tackle Calvin Clements.

“When they left, (offensive line coach Daryl Agpalsa) had a meeting with me,” Foster said. “He was like, ‘You’re going to be my guy for this year. You, Calvin and Kobe are going to be like my three main leaders of this group. We need you three to take the next step.'”

Foster’s certainly one of the more gregarious Jayhawks, but he said he’s never been a vocal leader, not even in high school. Baynes, too, described himself as a “worker bee” during his KU tenure. But they are embracing their new roles.

“They understand it, they learned it from great leaders in front of them,” Agpalsa said, “and I think at the end of the day, I think it’s super important for them to continue to push this thing forward, like we are doing as coaches.”

Foster is getting additional chances to observe spring practice, as a coach might, because head coach Lance Leipold is managing his workload somewhat in light of his track and field obligations. Foster said the time spent on the sideline gives him “a wider view of our offense,” particularly useful with a new coordinator in Jim Zebrowski.

“Some of you guys that have been out to practice, some days he’s got more load, other days he has less,” Agpalsa said. “The days he has less, what’s been really exciting is the leadership piece. He’s working behind the scenes, working with our other centers, making sure they’re getting the calls, preparing, they’ll ask him questions.”

Indeed, part of Foster’s responsibility is bringing up the young centers-to-be behind him: Tyler Mercer, a transfer from North Texas who started at center for the Mean Green as a freshman, and Amir Herring, an interior lineman who joined KU from Michigan last summer.

Foster described both of them as smart players.

“I think it was day one and coach Agpalsa was trying to pick on all the new guys and try to be like ‘All right, so what do we here, Tyler?'” he said. “And he was like, boom, immediate answer. Coach Agpalsa was like, ‘OK, all right, cool guy.'”

He said Mercer expressed a desire to learn “what goes through (Foster’s) head.”

“I remember Tyler, whenever he first got here, he came up to me, he was like, ‘I want to get in the film now, I want to learn, I want to learn about the offense, I want to learn about how you see the defense,'” Foster added.

For at least one more year, it’ll be Foster reading opposing Big 12 defenses as the anchor of the Jayhawks’ offensive line. He was a second-team All-Big 12 selection in 2024, and Baynes believes the two can function as “one of the best inside duos in the country.”

“It’s like you’re two guys on a bike,” Baynes said, “and you kind of both know ‘This is how we work.'”

Strength coach Matt Gildersleeve, who had said shortly after Foster’s arrival last summer that he was really excited to spend a full offseason working with his new center, recently described that offseason as “everything I thought it would be.”

“In terms of his size, power, speed, intelligence, now that he’s been within our system for a year, we’ve had him for a long time, I’m excited about his last college season and being a part of it,” Agpalsa said. “I think there’s a lot of things he wants to achieve, and I think what the best part of it is, is he wants to achieve team goals first.”