Lance Leipold hopes Anderson Family Football Complex upgrade will start after spring ball

LAWRENCE — There’s been a lot of anticipation surrounding the upcoming renovations to the Anderson Family Football Complex and David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.

Kansas athletic director Travis Goff has talked about it in recent months. So, too, has Jayhawks’ head football coach Lance Leipold. And in a recent episode of The Jayhawker Podcast, Leipold provided an update on the timeline for the upgrade specific to the Anderson Family Football Complex.

“We’re going to start on some renovation improvements within the football facility, the Anderson football complex, to make it better for our players on a daily basis,” Leipold said. “We’re hoping that those will start immediately after spring football.”

In a contract Leipold signed in November 2022, there was a specific mention of the need for meaningful and substantial progress to be made toward this renovation by July 1, 2023. That would mean the renovation, such as physical construction, would have started by then. If not, Leipold could terminate the agreement without having to be responsible for any release payment to the university.

The note of a relative start date, well in advance of that July 1 deadline, should provide some confidence that the momentum built around these projects wasn’t all just talk. And despite the continual change of the landscape of college athletics in recent years, facilities remain important.

“We’re going to — improving in the locker room and do some things in the weight room ... which will be the first thing we’ll have to do,” Leipold said. “Then, after the season, we hope to have additions added on to the building as well that’ll help us with some of those space factors ... because, really, staffs have been added in so many different ways.”

Leipold said when they bring in prospects, those athletes want to know how they will be developed, with what and around whom. This is an effort to continue to put the program in a positive place. It adds to the momentum the Jayhawks have built on the field, with their first bowl appearance in 2022 since 2008, and with the fan base.

Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.