College football's rise of the small-school coaches - ESPN

IN MAY 2021, a few weeks after being hired at Kansas, Lance Leipold approached the school's administration about moving practices to the morning.

He was told it could be done, but not until early 2022. Too many class conflicts for the fall. That wouldn't work. Leipold needed morning practices immediately, noting the benefits for players' sleep and daily activity structure. So he went back, over and over, asking for a list of impacted players. The list never came, but Leipold kept pushing, not delegating to anyone else. He thought the passion of the message «gets watered down» if it didn't come from him.

The group of players with conflicts dwindled to seven and eventually to one, an engineering major who would miss a portion of one practice.

Kansas practiced in the morning that fall and has ever since.

«If I take the first answer, 'No, we can't do it,' because it's going to take a lot of extra work, I don't think this program is where it's at today,» Leipold told ESPN. «I've learned the hard way that what I think is really important, one and two on my priority list, might be seven and eight on the [administration's]. So I need to say: 'It's worth fighting for.'»

The hard way for Leipold and his coaching peers stemmed from life in college football's lower divisions, where coaches must fight for what they want. Coaches including Leipold, Kansas State's Chris Klieman and Alabama's Kalen DeBoer have brought that approach — and a championship pedigree — from smaller schools to the highest level of college football. They also have helped shift the hiring patterns in a sport that had often ignored those on the fringes.

The last coaching carousel included Houston hiring Willie Fritz, who spent more than 30 years in small colleges