2008 KANSAS JAYHAWKS FOOTBALL
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
Above: Safety Justin Thornton celebrates with Mike Rivera, left, and Maxwell Onyegule, right, after picking off a pass in KU's 24-12 Orange Bowl victory against Virginia Tech. Left: Darrell Stuckey and the Jayhawks' only loss in an otherwise perfect season came against Missouri and its quarterback Chase Daniel.
They've never felt like this before
Jayhawks say they have a new swagger as this season starts and expect a repeat from last year, when they went 12-1 and won the Orange Bowl
BY B.J. RAINS rains@kansan.com
Just talk to a Kansas football player for a few minutes about the upcoming season and you'll notice something different.
It's hard to pin-point exactly what it is, but there seems to be a different feeling around the program these days. And why not? Coming off the best season in school history, it's only natural that players and coaches seem to have a little more bounce in their step as they walk to meetings or to the practice field.
"We have that swagger," safety Darrell
Stuckey said.
And as the Jayhawks look to repeat the success of last year's record-breaking year, they are doing it with a different kind of 'swagger' that hasn't been seen around this town in a long time.
"We have a lot of confidence in ourselves," quarterback Todd Reeing said. "Not that we lacked confidence before, but we really expect to be on the big stage now."
The Jayhawks will definitely enter the big stage this fall, entering the year ranked 13th in the ESPN/ USA Today Coaches poll and anywhere from 10th to 20th by anyone and everyone that put together a pre-season poll. ESPN2 has already picked the Jayhawks for a nationally televised Friday night game at No. 21 South Florida in week three.
"We're excited by that," Reesing added. "To have the opportunity to play in big games and play on national television, it's exciting for us, because it's somewhere that this program hasn't been in a while."
A year after just wanting to get enough
wins to make it to a bowl game, the Jayhawks and their fans have much higher goals this season. No longer does the thought of a Big 12 Championship or high-profile bowl game seem like that much of a dream.
It's a big difference from when coach Mark Mangino arrived at Kansas in 2002. Then, the program had no expectations, and the games were merely a way for the basketball-crazed Jayhawk fans to pass the time until hoops season got underway.
"That was a terrible feeling." Mangino said. "It was bad for the players, the coaches, when nobody expects you to be successful. That's not a great feeling, and after experiencing that the first few years, we embrace any expectations that people have for us now.
"Nobody outside of this program has higher expectations for this team than the kids that play here. They have high expectations. They want to win. They set the bar high for themselves."
Those expectations might be as high this year as they have ever been when it comes to
Kansas football. It's been a while since opposing teams looked at their schedule to see when they were playing Kansas, knowing that it would be one of the toughest games of their season.
"As we started to win more games during the season, we started to get everybody's best shot," Mangino said. "We will get it from the first game this year all of the way through. We'll get everybody's best shot if we continue to play at a high level, but I told our players the top teams in the country are used to that, used to getting every team's best shot and if we can't handle that then we're not going to be as good as we want to be."
And while Mangino said he wasn't in the business of making predictions for the upcoming season, even he knows that it could be another special season for his squad.
"We think we're going to have a pretty good football team again." Mangino said.
Just one of many who seem to think the same thing.
Thursday, August 28, 2008 www.kansan.com
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