B.J. Canady liked the attention from the Kansas fans

B.J. Canady has been to a KU football game before. But his trip to Lawrence to watch the Jayhawks play Tennessee Tech had a different feel.

For this game, he was watching as a recruit.

This time around he walked through the stadium and people knew who he was.

“I'm not going to say it was the same because all the other KU games I went to, I was there as a fan,” Canady said. “But you could tell it's different when the fans are actually showing you love. When I was walking up the stairs leaving, I was having KU fans saying, ‘BJ, you know where to go, Rock Chalk.’ They were giving me high fives and everything.”

One on hand it felt good to be recognized and the other it caught him by surprise.

“I don't know, it wasn't weird, but it was different,” he said. “It kind of made me happy. It is first time I actually got recognized in public by somebody.”

Canady is not hard to spot in a crowd. The 6-foot-5, 250-pound defensive lineman from Topeka High has all the tangibles college recruiters look for in a prospect.

Since he is in the 2024 class, he could not talk with college coaches until September 1st and that is when he got the call from the Kansas coaches. Offensive line coach Scott Fuchs and Lance Leipold have been in contact and Taiwo Onatolu is expected to be another coach that will recruit him.

He said he has been hearing from every coach.

“Well, I just now started to really get to know them on Sept. 1,” he said. “But every single coach showed me love. I’ve got handwritten letters by all of them, I think. That really may help a lot with getting relationship with them.”

Canady watched the Jayhawks open the season with a big win over Tennessee Tech.

“You can tell KU's coming back,” he said. “The D-line played good and the offense played really good. I wonder how many sacks KU ended up with, but I know they had a lot, which I like about KU since I'm playing D-line.”

Topeka did not play until Saturday and that allowed him to make the Friday game. There are several schools recruiting him and he wants to take more trips during the season. One of them will be to Stanford where his sister, Nija, will play softball.

“I'm hearing a lot from K State, Iowa State, Oregon, Nebraska, Minnesota, Stanford, Cal, and whole lot of schools in the mix,” he said. “I will talk with the Stanford coaches when I go there. I'm trying to get back to Oklahoma soon. I'm going back up to Nebraska. I'm going to visit K State and then Iowa State and Iowa. I'm just trying to get to some schools I haven't been to.”