Kansas football has declined a bowl bid, KU official confirms
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LAWRENCE — Kansas football has declined a bid to play in a bowl game, a KU official confirmed Sunday.
Although the Jayhawks finished the regular season 5-7 in 2025, as certain bowl-eligible teams who’d reached at least six wins decided not to participate in postseason play, other teams like KU entered consideration. According to a report Sunday from On3’s Brett McMurphy, other 5-7 teams that elected not to play included Florida State, Auburn, UCF, Baylor, Rutgers, and Temple.
McMurphy described a mission to find a team to play Georgia Southern in the JLab Birmingham Bowl, which ultimately resulted in a 5-7 Appalachian State team.
This would have been the third bowl game of KU coach Lance Leipold’s era in Lawrence, which began in 2021. The Jayhawks qualified for bowl games in 2022 and 2023 and won in 2023. An explanation for why Kansas didn’t choose to take up this opportunity wasn’t given, but given that it looked like the season had ended with a late-November loss against Utah, the wheels of the offseason program could already be very much in motion.
Playing in the bowl game could have allowed Kansas to practice more and develop the quarterbacks on its roster who are set to compete for the starting job in 2026, had they all been available to participate ahead of the bowl game. The same goes for many other younger Jayhawks players, who are set to assume much more high-profile roles next year. But now they’ll all look ahead to winter conditioning and spring ball.
The Big 12 Conference had announced fines for Kansas State and Iowa State, both bowl-eligible teams that elected not to play in bowl games amid coaching changes at each program. Those were for $500,000 to opt out of the Big 12’s bowl pool, with the conference acknowledging the coaching changes but noting contractual obligations to bowl partners. The Big 12 has not detailed any fine for KU as of Tuesday afternoon.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He was the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football has declined a bowl bid, KU official confirms
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