For years, football at the University of Kansas was nothing more than a time-filler while students and alumni awaited the start of basketball season.

That changed dramatically in one magical season in the fall of 2007 when an undersized quarterback led the Jayhawks through 11 straight wins and made Memorial Stadium the “in” place on a Saturday afternoon in Lawrence.

Todd Reesing’s football career at Kansas is a fairy-tale story that began improbably and ended the same way. But he and his teammates took Jayhawks fans on a ride they had never experienced before – the heady heights of playing for the No. 1 ranking in college football and their first-ever win in a major bowl game when they defeated Virginia Tech 27-24 in the Orange Bowl following the 2007 season.

A year later, Reesing was even more prolific, and the Jayhawks played in consecutive bowl games for the first time in school history. That season was punctuated by Reesing’s scrambling touchdown strike to Kerry Meier that beat the the Missouri Tigers and lifted the Jayhawks into the Insight.com Bowl where they thumped Minnesota.

His senior season was a disappointment, marred by confrontation between members of the football and basketball teams, a university investigation into the conduct of the head football coach, and a seven-game losing streak to end the season.

In Rising to New Heights: Inside the Jayhawks Huddle Reesing talks about it all, the highs and lows of making Kansas football relevant again and his journey through college football with all the skills of a big-time quarterback but none of the size.