Jack Craig and all the other professors of animal science at Kansas State know who’s coming to town on Thursday night. Arch-rival Kansas. So they act accordingly.
“We try to keep our buildings locked before that game,” Craig pointed out.
Especially the poultry building where, says Craig, “We have from 4,000 to 5,000 on hand most of the time.”
In case you hadn’t guessed, we’re talking chickens. We’re talking about Ahearn Fieldhouse fowl, those non-mythical birds that mysteriously appear out of the student section when Kansas players are introduced before basketball games.
Where those chickens come from nobody knows, but Professor Craig confirms the KSU chicken barn (coop?) has at times been the source.
“Yes, I think it’s happened in years past, but not recently,” he told me.
Maybe that’s because they’ve learned to padlock the doors to protect themselves from chicken thieves.
As you know, KSU’s Ahearn Fieldhouse is history after this season and everybody is waxing nostalgic about the venerable oversized bowling alley that opened in 1950.
Nostalgia for me means the chickens. Except for the year they threw bananas at KU’s Donnie Von Moore in the mid-70s, Ahearn has been consistently fowl-prone.
In fact, prior to every KU-K-State game in Manhattan, sportswriters have been known to kill time guessing how many hidden hens they think will appear this time.
The most I’ve ever seen is eight, which is, of course, a lot of chicken-smuggling.
Over the years, I always suspected K-State officials winked at the traditional deed, mainly because Ahearn custodial personnel have always been poised to whisk them – and often their, uh, byproducts – away almost as soon as they hit the floor.
Of course, there are some of us who are so citified we can’t imagine anyone sneaking a chicken into an arena unnoticed. Come to find out, though, it’s not that difficult if you put ’em in a bag.
“If you cover it’s head,” explained Professor Craig, “it’ll usually remain quiet.”
If you’ve never been in Ahearn during the KU player intros, you’ve probably never seen the chickens because the TV cameras focus tightly on each Jayhawk and it’s rare when a flying fowl lands close to one of them.
That’s by chance, not choice. Throwing the chickens, not sneaking them in without a ticket, is the hard part. Pullet-pitching is fairly easy, but you never know where they’re gonna go or what they’re gonna do.
Sometimes the startled clucks will land with a thud and die – I’ve seen that – but more often they do flap their wings just enough to land and prevent a quick trip to Colonel Sanders or Mrs. Winner’s.
Other times they emulate the Wright Brothers and stay aloft longer than expected. I remember, for instance, when one flew all the way across the court and over the Kansas bench, causing then KU coach Ted Owens and others in the bench area to duck.
That bird, I assume, was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross or perhaps, more fittingly for K-State, a Purple Heart.
If you know anything about Ahearn, you know the media sits where birds normally would, in a press box suspended high above the floor. From those reaches, we would be endangered by eagles, condors, vultures and low-flying aircraft, but never by a chicken.
“They aren’t good flyers,” Prof Craig confirmed, “but that’s because chickens today don’t get much practice. It used to be when we raised them outside, we’d go out and find them in trees.”
Next year it won’t matter. When the Wildcats move into Bramlage Coliseum, the media will be seated on the floor, much like in Allen Fieldhouse.
What that means is, for the first time, scribes and throats will also be fair game for K-State’s fluttering fowls. That’s not an enthralling prospect to me, but if I were a chicken I’d be plenty nervous, too. Some of those Fourth Estate guys you just can’t trust.
I mean, if a chicken flew out on the floor, it sure wouldn’t surprise me a bit if somebody in press row reached out, plucked out a feather and announced: “When your ball-point is out of ink, the quill is mightier than the sword.”
