PHOENIX — A couple of days before Kansas football competed in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in December, Lance Leipold revealed he didn’t initially anticipate UNLV would be the Jayhawks’ opponent.

Leipold, Kansas’ head coach, pointed out that traditionally the bowl game has been a matchup of Big 12 Conference and Big Ten Conference teams. Should the Jayhawks play in it, they would represent the Big 12. The Rebels would represent the Mountain West Conference.

Within a couple of hours of the announcement of their matchup, though, Leipold noted he received word a Mountain West opponent could be in play. Leipold heard UNLV was the leading team to take that spot. So, when the official announcement came out, he wasn’t taken by surprise.

While Leipold went on to express that nothing surprises him with bowl announcements anymore, that matchups can be moved around due to various factors, he detailed Kansas wanted to be in this game. He hopes the excitement he saw in the Jayhawks’ fan base about their potential bowl destinations can become a regular occurrence. That desire was certainly something that caught the eye of Erik Moses, the Fiesta Bowl Organization’s executive director and CEO who oversees the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

“I feel like we were being recruited as much as we were recruiting them,” Moses said a couple days before the game. “I mean, there are a lot of folks from that area of the country, Kansas and the Midwest, here in the valley. It’s warmer here generally, than it is there, and so I think the fan base was looking forward to coming here. And thankfully we’ve got a great reputation as an organization for treating our teams and their fan base and administrators and travel party really well.”

That reputation would later be reinforced after Kansas won 49-36 against UNLV to capture the Jayhawks’ first bowl win in more than a decade. Leipold took time postgame to praise his team's experience. So, too, did Rebels coach Barry Odom, who described it as first class a bowl operation as he’s experienced.

That level of appreciation was something Moses highlighted in the days leading up to the game, as he mentioned how much work they put in to delivering that kind of experience. Over the course of the 2023 season, he noticed how much better Kansas and UNLV were doing compared to how the team’s had played in the years prior. The Jayhawks made back-to-back bowl games for the first time in more than a decade, while the Rebels made their first bowl game in a decade.

Trying to predict when Kansas could be back is a tall order, given all the factors that are in play each year. Moses noted at one point it is tough enough to predict which teams they’ll get for their bowl games during the season itself. But if the Jayhawks return in the years ahead, it’ll harken back to memories made in recent days.

“They’re certainly not taking it for granted, right?” Moses said a couple days before the game. “There’s a good amount of enthusiasm and exuberance, both from the players who seem very appreciative and grateful for being here and for the overall experience, but also from the coaching staff and administrators as well … on both sides.”

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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football appreciated its Guaranteed Rate Bowl experience