Lance Leipold is days away from starting his sixth season at the helm of the Kansas Jayhawks. Thus far, Leipold has steadied out a career that has seen the Jayhawks reach two bowl games and a 27-35 overall record. Making the 2026 season a vital one that could give him and his transfer-laden squad a third bowl in six years, creating a truly remarkable turnaround for a once-dormant program. But there are still some challenging games in the way of that.
In CBS Sports’ “Ranking each week of 2026 college football schedule by watchability,” piece, Austin Nivision breaks down some of each week's best games into three different tiers. Tier 1: “Matchups consisting of elite vs. elite. You will schedule your entire day around these games.” Tier 2: “Games featuring College Football Playoff contenders, rivalry games with national appeal and impactful conference matchups,” and lastly Tier 3: “These can be regional rivalry games, sneaky fun conference games and really any undercard matchup with the potential to get sideways.”
The Jayhawks were selected in two separate weeks of this ranking.
Rivalries rule the way in latest ranking
While Leipold has done tremendous work thus far, this isn’t the time of 2022 or 2023, when, if hot, the Jayhawks could keep close with the nation’s elite teams and be on the brink of an upset.
This is still a team that is coming off of back-to-back 5-7 seasons where they threw away postseason chances with close losses time and time again. Until Kansas can consistently solidify themselves around 7-8 win seasons, they aren’t going to be making many appearances on a list as stacked as this.
That being said, it makes complete sense that their matchups against No. 25 Missouri and Kansas State were selected
Missouri joins week two as a Tier 3 game. The last time these squads met up, it culminated in one of college football’s most underrated games of the season, resulting in the Jayhawks narrowly falling 42-31 at the hands of the Tigers, in what was the pair’s first meeting since 2011.
In a game where defense hardly prevailed, it was ultimately Missouri’s defense that broke serve just past midway through the fourth quarter while toppling on the final seven points to end the thriller.
Next season, the two will meet inside David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium in what could be a landmark victory for Leipold.
Week 7 will see the Jayhawks having to travel to Bill Snyder Family Stadium to take on the Wildcats, which will see KU play against Collin Klein for the first time. We don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of how rough it has been for the Jayhawks in this rivalry, but now is as good a time as ever to get one over on their in-state rival. This match was slated as a Tier 3 game; however, Nivision ranked this week as the second-best of the season, so seeing Kansas on here at all is a bit of a minor accomplishment.
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