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Kansas City, Mo. — Senior quarterback Todd Reesing stood near the sideline with his hands on his hips and his chin straps dangling from his helmet.

He hugged teammates and fellow seniors Kerry Meier and Justin Thornton. He shook hands and exchanged words with Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, who worked his way across the field to find the No. 5 jersey.

Reesing titled his helmet on top of his head, raised his hands toward Kansas’ fans and applauded. And then, for the final time, Reesing turned and headed for the locker room.

Moments before, on a field 42 miles from Memorial Stadium, Reesing and the Jayhawks suffered a final disappointing setback in a season that hasn’t gone as anyone expected.

Sure, the 41-39 last-second loss to Missouri dropped Kansas to 5-7, ensuring that the Jayhawks won’t play in a bowl game for the first time since 2006. And sure, plenty of questions still persist surrounding the future of coach Mark Mangino.

But viewing the game in a larger scope, Saturday provided the final touches on a career that shook a dormant football program to life.

Reesing tossed a school-record 498 yards and accounted for all five of Kansas’ touchdowns in delivering the type of performance that will certainly define his legacy long after he is gone.

“The fact that it’s over and it happened so fast, you know it sucks, man,” Reesing said. “I hope the legacy is still positive, though, because we have done a lot. We’ve had a lot of players do things that people said they couldn’t do.”

Perhaps no one has proved as many wrong as Reesing, the undersized quarterback who jumped at Mangino’s offer to play Division I football when few schools provided him the chance.

For three seasons, big plays and victories rolled together to develop into the norm for Reesing. And during that time he certainly delivered both, including plenty of school records and an Orange Bowl victory in 2007.

Then his final season started and the attention shifted to a Big 12 North title — an accomplishment that would certainly serve as the icing for an already successful career.

Yet that fairytale ending crashed and so, too, did Kansas’ goals. In a way, Missouri’s last-second field goal to snap Kansas’ bowl aspirations was a fitting close to an odd season.

“I started 11-0 and I finished 0-7,” Reesing said. “Talk about an up and down career. We’ve been through a lot as a senior class.”

But Mangino was quick to add that the seniors’ overall legacy would not be overshadowed by a disappointing final season.

“They won’t be judged by their record this season throughout the rest of their lives,” Mangino said. “They will be judged by their character and their effort.”

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that Kansas started the season 5-0. The Jayhawks crawled into the top 20 and Reesing’s name was even mentioned in the same sentence as the Heisman Trophy.

But on a crisp night in Boulder, Colo. in early October, Kansas suffered its first setback. Reesing had two turnovers that led directly to Colorado touchdowns, beginning a trend that eventually led to his benching against Texas Tech Oct. 31.

The Jayhawks lost their final seven games of the season, and after each loss they simply struggled to explain the reasons for the collapse.

“No one wants to be 5-7,” junior wide receiver Dezmon Briscoe said. “I mean, that’s a terrible feeling. I’m hurting inside right now.”

After the game — after Kansas let a three-point lead slip away in the final three minutes — the Jayhawks slowly exited the field and headed into the belly of Arrowhead Stadium.

There, inside the locker room, Kansas’ players looked around and realized that this season — and therefore the seniors’ careers — had finally reached an end.

“You see the emotions on all your teammates’ faces,” Thornton said. “They’re the guys that you’ve been playing next to for the last five years and the guys who helped build this program. We left our legacy. I just wish we could have gone out on a winning note.”

For a while, it seemed that was going to be the case.

Kansas held onto the lead for much of Saturday’s game, delivering a performance that proved the Jayhawks hadn’t given up on a season that has featured plenty of off-the-field issues.

But Reesing was tackled for a safety in the fourth quarter after attempting a designed quarterback draw and Missouri drove down the field for the game-winning field goal as the final seconds ticked off the clock.

“The reality is that’s the last game we’re ever going to play in a Kansas uniform,” Reesing said. “It hurts that it happened that way. But the thing we’re holding our head high on is we played hard the entire game. We just fell short and things didn’t go our way as they haven’t the entire season.”

In his first moments as a former collegiate athlete, Reesing said he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with his time. He said he would most likely sleep in, and he said the pain from the loss would most likely still be there when he woke up.

He also said graduate school and a chance at professional football could sit in his future.

But at that moment, Reesing wanted to focus more on a career that has seemingly taken every possible twist and turn in just four short years.

That’s why as he walked off the field, he looked into the stands and applauded those who were applauding back.

“Just to have that kind of support after this kind of skid is what really shows the growth in this program,” Reesing said. “Ten years ago, five years ago, if a team hit a skid like this, I don’t know if they’d get that kind of support from the fans.”

— Edited by Amanda Thompson

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