While basketball is the talk of the town in Lawrence, Kan., and deservedly so, when the Jayhawks can produce talent on girdrion, it is always notable.
For a large part of the 2000s, Kansas’ football program has been at the very best “subpar.” Since the turn of the millennium, the Jayhawks have reached just seven bowl games. Two of them have come under current head coach, Lance Leipold. With Leipold achieving two bowl games in 2022 and 2023. Yet, before Leipold began his stint, the Jayhawks had gone 14 years without reaching postseason football.
If there was ever a period you could call the Jayhawks a “consistent” bow; threat, it would be during the latter four years of Mark Mangino, when the Jayhawks hit two bowl games in that period, including a massive win in the Orange Bowl over the Virginia Tech Hokies where KU defeated Tech with a narrow 24-21 win, which concluded a 12-1 season. To this date, it is just the third season in Kansas football history where the Jayhawks reached 10+ wins, in a span that lasts 125 years.
Throughout the Mangino’s last four years under center was star quarterback Todd Reesing. Coming out of high school, Reesing was deemed a three-star out of Austin, Texas, according to the 247 Composite.
An all-time career for Reesing
Reesing oversaw a 27-14 record in his time with the Jayhawks, where Reesing led Kansas to two bowl wins and a conference-leading 3,616 yards in his final season.
The dual-threat quarterback was recently nominated in ESPN’s top 100 quarterbacks since 2000, where Reesing was selected 67th.
Reesing finished his career with an elite 11,194 passing yards, 90 passing touchdowns, 33 interceptions, with a strong 64% completion rate, and 15 rushing touchdowns added on top. Reesing managed 646 yards on the ground in his tenure.
In the years following Reesing’s exit, it took until Leipold’s second season in 2022 for the Jayhawks to pass the amount of wins that Reesing had notched in his four-year stint.
The only other quarterback to come close to what Reesing had achieved was recent departure Jalon Daniels. Daniels left KU with 9,282 passing yards, 67 passing touchdowns, 31 interceptions, 1,445 rushing yards, and 23 touchdowns, finishing this modern era as Kansas’ best quarterback since Reesing; however, still fell well behind in passing yards and passing touchdowns.
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