​FRISCO, Texas — Jalon Daniels long stood as one of the defining faces of Kansas football for several seasons. As he fought through health issues in 2022 and 2023, he remained part of the Jayhawks squads that earned bowl berths in back-to-back campaigns. He appeared in every game for KU across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, and his presence traces back to 2021, when he started at quarterback and KU pulled off a road win at Texas.
Today, though, Daniels is pursuing a professional path, and his college chapter has drawn to a close. This week in Frisco, he wasn’t among Kansas’ representatives at Big 12 Conference media days. For KU head coach Lance Leipold, whose first season as Kansas’ coach began in 2021, that absence was unfamiliar in a certain sense.
“Our first year, we were planning to fly down the day of, and storms kept us from reaching media day, so we had to Zoom in. This is my first media day without Jalon Daniels, and I miss him a little in that regard,” Leipold said. “Because he guided us and always gave us a lot of life. But it’s different. We all move on.”
Kansas did bring five players to media day: redshirt senior wide receiver Cam Pickett, redshirt junior offensive lineman Calvin Clements, junior defensive end Leroy Harris III, redshirt junior defensive tackle Blake Herold, and redshirt senior linebacker Trey Lathan. The Jayhawks currently face a quarterback competition, with redshirt junior Cole Ballard and redshirt sophomore Isaiah Marshall serving as the leading contenders.
Kansas enters the 2025 season aiming to reverse a recent trend of 5-7 records in two consecutive years and recapture the momentum that has eluded the program in recent campaigns. Bringing back Andy Kotelnicki as associate head coach should provide a familiar and stabilizing influence on offense; Kotelnicki previously served as KU’s offensive coordinator during the program’s early years before spending the last two seasons at Penn State.
The season opener is scheduled for Sept. 4, a home game against LIU, which will kick off a schedule designed to build consistency and restore Kansas to its competitive footing within the conference. As Leipold noted, media days are a reminder of the evolving roster and shifting leadership, a time to acknowledge the contributions of a veteran like Daniels while embracing the next wave of players who will help define KU’s path forward.
This piece draws from reporting by Jordan Guskey of The Topeka Capital-Journal, who covers University of Kansas Athletics and was recognized as the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. For additional updates and details, contact Guskey at jmguskey@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter at @JordanGuskey. This information originally appeared in the Topeka Capital-Journal.