Lance Leipold won't appeal recent targeting call. KU football's coach, though, has before
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LAWRENCE — Kansas football coach Lance Leipold revealed Monday he won’t be appealing the targeting call that saw Syeed Gibbs, one of KU’s cornerbacks, disqualified from a win this past weekend against Oklahoma State.
Postgame, after the 38-21 victory against OSU, Leipold had left the door open to appealing the call. He’d mentioned they’d take a look at the play and see if it was worth it. But, in the end, the Jayhawks decided it wasn’t.
However, if Leipold had decided to appeal the call, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d done so this fall. Previous targeting calls that have gone against Kansas (5-4, 3-3 in Big 12 Conference) in 2025 have included safety Devin Dye, linebacker Bangally Kamara and linebacker Jon Jon Kamara. And while it didn’t work, Leipold did volunteer that Bangally Kamara’s targeting call was appealed.
“Like I said, you see stuff, you see replays, again I’ll be careful, but you see the one in the Ohio State-Penn State game and it’s not targeting — I don’t know anymore,” Leipold said as he spoke generally about the topic. “I don’t understand it. And I understand, though — the one thing I do understand, to make sure I’m clear, is it’s still about the safety of the player. And that being said, we’ve got to make sure that we have good target areas, we’re doing things we want. The one about Syeed’s, that we first saw, he kept — it looked to us that his face was up as much as possible and things like that.”
Kansas defensive coordinator D.K. McDonald said Tuesday he thought Gibbs was having a good game against Oklahoma State before it was cut short due to the targeting call. That play came in the fourth quarter, on a hit Gibbs made on the OSU quarterback. What had initially looked like a turnover, because Gibbs forced a fumble that was recovered by one of his teammates, turned into a play that allowed the Oklahoma State drive to continue and ultimately end in a touchdown.
Of course, that OSU drive didn’t do much to determine the game this past weekend, as KU was going to win regardless. What the call against Gibbs does more so is affect Kansas’ depth when it kicks off this upcoming Saturday on the road against Arizona (5-3, 2-3 in Big 12). McDonald noted that dealing with that initially will require a next-man-up mentality.
“We’ve got some guys, and they’ve just got to be ready to go, and then when we get him back in the second half, be ready to go,” McDonald said. “So, it’s unfortunate what happened, but it was a good call and we have to continue to teach our guys to put their target lower.”
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 coach Lance Leipold won’t appeal targeting Big 12
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