Bulletin board material is often a constant for players in college football and that seemed to serve Kansas well prior to their near upset bid against Texas on Saturday night.
The Jayhawks came up a last second field goal short of pulling the shocker but had one of their best performances ever in Austin during an eventual 50-48 loss to the No. 15 team in the country. The biggest factor motivating them? It may just have been an off-hand remark from Tom Herman earlier in the week.
We’ll let the Kansas City Star fill in the background:Herman spoke for 26 minutes at his Monday media availability, with much of the discussion centering around the Longhorns’ 34-27 loss to rival Oklahoma last weekend.
At the 16:55 mark of his news conference, Herman was finally asked his first question about KU. Reporters in attendance said, at that point, that the coach playfully chided writers for not asking him about the Jayhawks sooner.
“We actually play a game this week?” Herman said with a smile, referring to the previous onslaught of questions about the previous week.
That quote was apparently what Les Miles and his staff kept reiterating in the days leading up to the actual game, leading many Jayhawks players who didn’t have the time to watch the full video to take offense at Herman equating Saturday’s contest to a bye.
“We watched that probably a thousand times this week, just the disrespect that they put on us,” KU receiver Andrew Parchment told the paper. “But I hope that we showed them what we’re about.”
That they did in putting a scare into the Longhorns and probably forcing Herman to be a little more cognizant of getting taking out of context when meeting with the media.
