Big XII Farewell #4: Kansas

This Saturday in Lawrence, Kansas, KU and CU will meet for the last time. CU leads the all time series (which began in 1903) 42-24-3.

Jayhawks, you will be missed.

You are and always have been a basketball school. A very good basketball school. And a usually lousy football school with brief periods of competency. I will remember you as the alma mater of Gale Sayers, John Riggins and Dana Stubblefield. I will remember you as the team against which I could almost always count on a victory for much of my youth and young adulthood.

I always thought of KU as the only academic peer of Colorado in the Big 8. In a sea of thinly veiled football factories, CU and KU seemed to be the islands of academic credibility. And in the days of the Big XII, we've remained those islands with the possible addition of Texas. I respect you, KU.

I'll choose not to remember you as the team that became suddenly good and simultaneously suddenly unlikeable during the tenure of Mark Mangino.

But Mangino has now been thankfully discarded and KU has a surprisingly likable coach. The surprising part of the likeablility is that the coach in question is none other than Turner Gill, former Husker great. Turner is one of exactly two Nebraska players who I can honestly say that I admire and respect. Sadly though, the commencement of his tenure at KU has gone very badly indeed. KU has the distinction of currently being the one Big XII team that is obviously worse (?) than CU. Give Gill time, KU will improve. They'll likely never contend for a conference championship but they will requite themselves well and do so with dignity and entertain the denizens of Lawrence until the annual sweet release of basketball season.

So farewell, old friend and colleague. I will miss you. And when the Big XII inevitably augers in in two years time, I hope that you will find a good home in a good conference. Safe travels 'Hawks.