Kansas State beat Kansas 35-24 Saturday, and the losing streak nobody in Lawrence wants to talk about anymore rolled to 18 straight. That number gets repeated so often it's become scenery. The number that should actually worry Kansas is six: that's how many of those losses belong to Lance Leipold alone, in six tries, since he took the job in 2021.
There's a temptation, every year this happens, to wave at the calendar and call it structural. Kansas State has had continuity at the top, through Bill Snyder and now Collin Klein, and the argument goes that some programs just have a rival's number for a generation. But Kansas still leads the all-time series. This is a specific, recent era, and it has one common thread on the Kansas sideline: Leipold has never beaten this team.
Saturday had every reason to be different. Kansas led 17-7 in the first quarter, built that lead early, then couldn't hold it. Kansas State's backs took over on the ground, and early in the fourth quarter the Kansas quarterback threw an interception into the end zone that effectively ended things. A turnover in scoring range followed by a long K-State run is a program that can't get out of its own way in the biggest game on its schedule, year after year, under the same coach.
People defending Leipold have a real point: this is a six-season body of work, and there was a nine-win season in that stretch that looked like real progress. A coach doesn't get torched for one bad afternoon against a rival. But six bad afternoons against the same rival add up to a pattern, and patterns are exactly what a fanbase is allowed to hold a coach accountable for. Kansas sits at 2-4 this season with three straight losses in conference play, coming off back-to-back 5-7 finishes. That's a program sliding, and the rivalry loss is the most visible symptom of the decline.
Call the streak itself an eighteen-year institutional embarrassment if you want, because it is one. But don't let Leipold hide behind its length. He inherited a losing streak, and in six tries, several of them in games Kansas led, he hasn't shortened it by a single game. A coach who keeps losing winnable rivalry games while the rest of his program backslides doesn't get to point at history and call it a gap. He is the gap.
