For Kansas, Friday night is less about surviving an FCS opener than about establishing a new baseline. After a 5-7 season and a busy offseason overhaul, KU football begins the 2025 season at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium against Long Island, and the first question is not whether the Jayhawks have talent. It is whether they are organized enough to show it immediately.
Lance Leipold made that point clearly on Monday when he and Andy Kotelnicki discussed the matchup and Kansas’ offense. Leipold said the Jayhawks must respect every opponent and be ready to play their best football right out of the gate, a fair warning for a team that has changed a lot since last fall. Kansas added transfer players on offense and defense, changed its quarterback, and will spend the early part of the season learning how quickly those pieces fit together.
Why the opener matters
That context makes this more interesting than a routine season opener. Kansas is not just trying to beat LIU; it is trying to show that its new structure can hold up before Big 12 play arrives. The Jayhawks have plenty of recent evidence that this program can be difficult to manage when it gets the details right, but 2025 asked for a reset after the finish fell to 5-7. Openers tend to expose timing issues, and Kansas has several moving parts.
Long Island is no pushover for a team that assumes an FCS label settles the discussion. The Sharks beat FBS Eastern Michigan early in 2025, which at least gives them a recent example of handling a higher-level opponent. They also opened Week 0 of 2026 by falling behind North Dakota 42-0 by halftime before losing 42-21, a reminder that the margin for error can disappear quickly when an opponent starts fast. Leipold pointed to that resilience, noting that even as the score got lopsided, Long Island’s coaches kept coaching and the players kept competing.
What Kansas is trying to prove
The most important football question may be how quickly Kansas’ new offense finds rhythm. Andy Kotelnicki brought a little levity to the topic, saying he “Gotta Have It,” like it’s Cold Stone, and calling that the biggest flavor. The line was playful, but the underlying idea is simple: Kansas needs production it can count on, not just theoretical upside. The Jayhawks have altered the quarterback room and reworked both sides of the ball, so the opener is really an evaluation of execution as much as outcome.
That is where the matchup becomes instructive. If Kansas is sharp, the game should show cleaner spacing, better eye discipline and fewer wasted snaps against a defense that likes to present different pictures. Calvin Clements said Long Island “move[s] a lot” and “show[s] a lot of different things,” which means the Jayhawks’ offense has to stay precise. If it does, the talent gap should show. If it does not, the opener could become a useful warning instead of a comfortable tune-up.
Either way, Friday at 7 p.m. is the first real checkpoint for a Kansas team that spent the offseason changing almost everything except the expectation that improvement should be visible. Openers do not decide seasons, but they do tell you whether a team is ready to start acting like the version of itself it wants to become.
