On paper, Kansas University’s season football finale at Iowa State today is meaningless.
KU cannot qualify for a postseason game and, in reality, it means little whether the Jayhawks finish with a 5-6 record or a 4-7 mark.
But that’s all on paper.
KU junior wide receiver Harrison Hill, for example, believes next season’s opener against UCLA will actually be the second game of the 2001 campaign.
“For me,” Hill said earlier in the week, “next season starts on Saturday. That’s when we need to develop the tone for next year.”
Many seniors have come and gone since Kansas last qualified for a bowl game in 1995, and Hill does not want to be lumped into that category.
“I’ve been thinking about what to play for on Saturday,” said Hill, a 5-foot-11, 190-pounder from Wichita Collegiate. “We’re not going to have a great feeling about the season, no matter what. But if we want to change the program, it has to start here.”
If the program does change next season, Hill figures to play a large role in the turnaround. Hill has 42 receptions this season the most by a KU player since Isaac Byrd, now with the Carolina Panthers, had 53 in 1996.
Too, Hill has played in just nine of the Jayhawks’ 10 games. He missed the opener at Southern Methodist because he was suffering from dehydration. Hill was seriously ill. He couldn’t hold down fluids and he was battling severe headaches.
As it turned out, the unusually warm and humid weather of late August and early September exacerbated his condition.
Once the thermometer fell, Hill was OK.
“The weather helped me the most,” he said. “I haven’t had any problems since.”
If Hill has as big a season in 2001 as he has had this year, he will become the Jayhawks’ all-time leading receiver.
Willie Vaughn caught 133 passes while playing for the Jayhawks from 1985-88.
Hill has 101 career receptions with one season and one game remaining.
Hill caught 29 passes last year and 28 as a red-shirt freshman. He also has two catches that count during the 1997 when he played in only two games and was granted a medical red-shirt after breaking an ankle.
Curiously, Hill had six touchdown receptions entering his junior year, yet he doesn’t have a single TD catch this season.
“That’s kinda weird,” Hill said. “I can’t believe I haven’t scored. I don’t worry about it, but it’s still weird.”
With quarterback Dylen Smith a senior this fall, Hill will be catching passes from someone else during his senior year. It could be Mario Kinsey, the freshman from Waco, Texas, who red-shirted in football, but is playing basketball for the Jayhawks this winter.
If it is Kinsey, the young quarterback-guard definitely will not be wearing the same jersey number in both sports at least not next fall.
Kinsey has No. 1 in basketball, but Hill owns that football digit.
“He’s not getting it, I know that,” Hill said, smiling. “He can have it when I leave, but not next year.”
