Jayhawks welcome Central Michigan for week 2 battle

Beginning in August 2017, fans will be allowed to bring only one clear plastic bag no larger than 12 inches by 6 inches by 12 inches or a one-gallon, clear, resealable plastic storage bag per person inside Kansas athletics events.

Fans will also be allowed a small clutch purse not to exceed 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches.

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Junior quarterback Peyton Bender impressed in his KU debut with 364 yards passing and four touchdowns. 

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas football is set to welcome Central Michigan to Memorial Stadium on September 9 for a 3 p.m. kickoff in Memorial Stadium. The Jayhawks will look to continue to build momentum as they are coming off a 38-16 win in the season opener against Southeast Missouri State.

SERIES HISTORY VS. CENTRAL MICHIGAN
vs. Central Michigan: 2-0
Current Streak: Won 2
Longest Win Streak: 2
Longest Winless Streak: N/A
Last 10 Games: 2-0
In Lawrence: 2-0
In Cape Mount Pleasant: 0-0
Neutral Sites: 0-0
Under David Beaty: 0-0
First Meeting: Sept. 1, 2007 (W, 52-7)
Last Meeting: Sept. 20, 2014 (W, 24-10)
 
A Debut to Remember
Junior quarterback Peyton Bender started his Kansas career off with a bang. Throwing for 364 yards on 23-of-37 passing and four touchdowns marks the best debut by a Jayhawk quarterback in the 127-year history of the program. Bender is the first player to put up numbers that big since 2009 when Todd Reesing passed for a program-best 498 yards while also throwing for four touchdowns against Missouri.

Bender’s 364 yards ranks 16th all-time in the Kansas single-game records and his four touchdowns is tied for third.

His third passing attempt in a KU uniform was a 77-yard touchdown to Steven Sims Jr., which is tied for the 15th-longest pass play in Kansas history.

Lock-Down D
Kansas’ defense allowed just 264 yards of total offense on 77 plays to SEMO in the season opener, which equates to a 3.4-yard average per play. That average was the lowest total for a Jayhawk defense since the 2010 season opener when KU held North Dakota State to 168 yards on 54 plays for a 3.1 average. The next-best average for Kansas was last season’s opener against Rhode Island when the Jayhawks held the Rams to 3.5 yards per play (63 plays, 219 total yards).

Good to Have You Back, Joe
Missing the final nine games of the 2016 season, redshirt junior linebacker Joe Dineen Jr. was ready to step back on the field for the Jayhawks. When he did so against SEMO, Dineen showed just how important he was to the Kansas defense by posting 2.5 tackles for a loss on his a way to a career-high 15 total tackles. Eleven of Dineen’s stops were solo tackles, which ranks third in the nation after one week of play.

Climbing to the Top
After a breakout sophomore campaign for wide receiver Steven Sims Jr., the junior from Houston, Texas is looking to claw his way to the top of the Kansas football record books. Coming into his junior year with 79 career receptions, Sims has upped his total to 83 with four catches in the season opener against Southeast Missouri State. By just matching his production from last season (72), the junior would move to third all-time at Kansas with 181 catches, 38 shy of Dezmon Briscoe (2007-09) with 219. Kansas’ leading pass-catcher, Kerry Meier, grabbed 226 passes from 2006-09.

Sims started the season just outside of KU’s top-20 in career receiving yards with 1,208, but his career-high performance of 142 yards in the season opener brought his total up to 1,350 to move him into 18th-place all-time. Recording 859 yards last season, a matched year from Sims would put him at 2,067 career receiving yards, which would rank fifth in the Kansas career records.

Two touchdowns in the season opener, including a 77-yard score, brought Sims’ career touchdown receptions total to 11, which ties him for 10th-place all-time at Kansas. The most recent Jayhawk to score 11 touchdowns or more was tight end Jimmay Mundine (11), who played for the Jayhawks from 2011-14.

The Wise Man
Junior defensive tackle Daniel Wise picked up right where he left off last season in Kansas’ first game of 2017. The Lewisville, Texas product recorded 3.0 tackles for a loss in the season opener, including 1.0 sacks, which put him well on his way of matching last season’s total of 10.0 TFLs.

Wise’s 3.0 TFLs led the Big 12 in week one and puts him in a tie for eighth in the nation this season in stops behind the line.

Ol’ Reliable
Junior wide receiver Steven Sims Jr., has not only put his name among the best pass catchers in recent Kansas history, but also on a list with just 20 current players on FBS rosters across the nation. Sims has a current streak of 24 games with a catch, joining the short list of players with a current active streak of 20 or more games with a reception. Since 2006, only three players at Kansas – Dexton Fields, Dezmon Briscoe and Kerry Meier – have had longer streaks with a catch than Sims. That consistency and reliability has garnered the Houston, Texas native some preseason attention, as he was named to the Biletnikoff Award watch list and was nominated for the Earl Campbell Tyler Rose Award.

20-plus straight games with a catch since 2006
1. K. Meier, 35 (2007-09)
2. D. Briscoe, 30 (2007-09)
3. D. Fields, 25 (2006-08)
4. S. Sims Jr., 24 (2015-)

Captains of the Ship
Voted on by team members, the 2017 Kansas football captains are junior defensive tackle Daniel Wise, junior defensive end Dorance Armstrong Jr., junior linebacker Joe Dineen Jr., senior running back Denzell Evans and junior wide receiver Jeremiah Booker.

Ring of Honor
First Team All-Americans from the 2007 season, Aqib Talib and Anthony Collins, will forever be remembered as Kansas legends, as their names now hang in the north end of Memorial Stadium in the Ring of Honor, along with the names of best-of-the-best from Kansas football’s history.

RING OF HONOR MEMBERS
Ray Evans (42)* (1941–42, 1946–47) DB/RB
Otto Schnellbacher (1942, 1946–47) End
Mike McCormack (1948–50) OL
George Mrkonic (1950–52) OL
Ollie Spencer (1950–52) OL
John Hadl (21)* (1959–61) QB/RB
Curtis McClinton (1959–61) RB
Gale Sayers (48)* (1962–64) RB
Bobby Douglass (1966–68) QB
John Zook (1966–68) DE
John Riggins (1968–70) RB
David Jaynes (1971–73) QB
Nolan Cromwell (1973–76) QB/S
Willie Pless (1982–85) LB
Anthony Collins (2005-07) OL
Aqib Talib (2005-07) CB

*Denotes retired jersey number

Hall of Fame
The Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame grew by three individuals and one team on September 2 when the 2007 Kansas football team that went on to win the 2008 Orange Bowl was inducted, as well as the team’s head coach Mark Mangino and First Team All-Americans Anthony Collins and Aqib Talib.

THE D.A. – Working for the people
Already one of the most notable Jayhawks in recent history, junior defensive end Dorance Armstrong Jr., is primed to have a season that could launch him to the top of the list when it comes to Kansas greats. Named the Preseason All-Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year by a unanimous decision, Armstrong is the first Jayhawk to earn an individual Big 12 preseason award, as well as the first to be a unanimous selection for the Preseason All-Big 12 Team. Along with his Big 12 preseason honors, Armstrong has been named to the Athalon Sports 2017 Preseason All-America Team, the Chuck Bednarik Award watch list and the Bronko Nagurski Trophy watch list.

Eyes on 84
Fifth-year senior Ben Johnson was named to the John Mackey Award preseason watch list for the second time in his career, announced in July. An All-Big 12 honorable mention tight end in 2015, Johnson has played in 34 career games and has been nothing but reliable for the Jayhawks. Starting 12 contests for KU over his career while catching 34 passes for 397 yards, the Basehor, Kansas product has been able to come up with big plays in the air, as well as helping block for the ground game.

Get Behind the Line
Dorance Armstrong Jr., catapulted himself into the national spotlight last season by posting massive defensive numbers, specifically in the tackles for loss and sacks columns. Notching 20.0 TFLs and 10.0 sacks, Armstrong was a force very few could handle. Adding to 5.0 TFLs from his freshman season, Armstrong is poised to climb into the Kansas football career charts in the category. Four players (Charlton Keith, David McMillan, Dana Stubblefield and Gilbert Brown) ended their Jayhawk careers with 30.0 TFLs to tie for ninth all-time. Kansas’ career record holder, Willie Pless, notched 41 TFLs in his four seasons in the Crimson and Blue.

Center of Attention
Sophomore center Mesa Ribordy saw his name pop up on the 2017 Rimington Trophy watch list, announced in July. The trophy is awarded to the best Division I center in the nation. Ribordy, a Louisburg, Kansas native, is a former walk-on for the Jayhawks. Playing in 11 games last season at both guard and center, Ribordy started the final five as the offensive line’s centerpiece. Never recording a bad snap, he posted 27 knock-down blocks on the season. Ribordy was extremely efficient for the Jayhawk offensive line in his rookie campaign, missing a team-low 10 assignments in his 800 plays of 2016.

The Mayor Gives Back
A native of Lawrence, Kansas, redshirt junior Joe Dineen Jr. has always known the benefits of giving back to his community, but roughly one year ago he became passionate about one cause in particular – childhood cancer. Due to his devotion to raising awareness and funds to fight the disease, Dineen was nominated to the Allstate American Football Coaches Association Good Works Team and named to the Wuerffel Trophy watch list, which honors college football’s top community servant.

Dineen’s dedication to helping the cause started when Cole Hayden (son of Shanda Hayden, Assistant Athletics Director for Academic and Career Counseling) was diagnosed with cancer. Since the diagnosis, Dineen has led his teammates in a number of activities to help benefit those diagnosed with the disease by visiting kids at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, participating in the Hilltop Hustle 5K (in which all proceeds were donated to Children’s Mercy in honor of Cole), and taking part in a local baseball game that raised funds for childhood cancer research. Most recently, Dineen put together the first-ever “Cole’s Christmas in July” in which he and his teammates donated toys that were gifted to Cole before his passing to kids at Children’s Mercy.

#EARNIT
Head coach David Beaty preaches a simple philosophy to his players, “You have to go out and earn everything you get. Nothing in life is going to be handed to you – on the football field or in the professional world – it has to be earned.” That simple statement is a pillar that the Kansas players strive to uphold on a daily basis and is the foundation for the type of player Beaty wants to recruit at the University of Kansas. His go-to sermon to the Jayhawk community is, “We are going to earn the support of our fans one person at a time, and we are not going to sleep until we can give everyone something to be proud of at Memorial Stadium.” As a result, a simple #EarnIt hashtag is plastered on everything Kansas football to show the culture Beaty brings to the table.

UP NEXT
The Jayhawks will hit the road for the first time in 2017 to face Ohio on Saturday, September 16. Kickoff against Ohio is scheduled for 1 p.m. and it will be available to watch on ESPN3. Kansas and Ohio have squared off twice before, with the Bobcats winning both contests, including last season’s 37-21 win at Memorial Stadium.
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