One of the joys of an athletic rivalry comes when the faithful in given camps can jibe back and forth and get fun out of it.
There has been periodic bitterness, but more often than not the Kansas-Kansas State sports history produces chuckles rather than the kind of ugliness which has occurred via the KU-Missouri linkup.
Right now, Jayhawk faithful seldom let K-State people forget that Roy Williams and Co. are enjoying a 19-game basketball win streak against the Wildcats. You can’t measure how quickly the Purple Pridesters respond with a “nyah-nyah” about the eight-game string the KSU footballers own against KU and how they’re slavering over making it nine this fall.
Trouble is, current KU football fans are too young to recall that Kansas was 8-0 against the Cats from 1907 through 1915, 8-0 from 1945 through 1952, then 10-0 from 1956 through 1965. A common KU jab: “At least my diploma doesn’t come from a Football Factory.”
Basketball-wise, there were times when Kansas State was as potent as KU, under Jack Gardner, Tex Winter and Jack Hartman. Both schools could be good in both at the same time.
It goes beyond sports, although it’s tilted in that direction when the KU and K-State zealots banter about academic, social and cultural trademarks.
Kansas Staters long have referred to Mount Oread as Snob Hill and love to gloat that they have had more scholarship winners in some key categories than Kansas.
Jayhawkers may react with such zingers as “Whatta ya call a pretty girl on the K-State campus?” Answer: A visitor. Or “Whatta ya call a Manhattan guy in a three-piece suit?” The deceased.
Back bounce the KSU-tutored likes of Andy Galyardt, Warren Hornsby, Les Krull, Rick Harman, Ward Haylett and such with wonderment about how Kansas ever kept some basketball players of the Ted Owens era eligible. In several suspicious cases, I’m not about to go out on a limb.
There was a wonderment about the Halls of Ivy quotient of KSU several years ago when a big running back reportedly got 17 hours of summer school credit to be eligible by September. I questioned that in print and drew some penetrating e-mails about several of those Owens cagers. I ran and hid.
In all this foolishness, gotta pass on a story I heard recently that lovingly besmirches the intellectual makeup of K-State mobsters. Don’t dare tell you where I heard it.
Seems K-State was recruiting a boffo blue-chip quarterback and he was on the verge of signing. KSU was understandably excited and said it would announce it formally in the football stadium the way KU handled Roy Williams’s “I’m staying” last July. A huge, adoring Purple crowd gathered and president Jon Wefald and coach Bill Synder ceremoniously escorted the kid to the middle of the field. The atmosphere was charged.
Said Wefald: “Now we’re all set, Harley, but there’s one final test you have to pass before we can make this official. . . . How much are 4 and 3?”
“Seven,” replied the recruit confidently and proudly.
With that, the people packing the stadium rose with a collective roar: “C’mon, Jon, give the poor kid at least one more chance!”
Now, I wasn’t there, but that’s the way I heard it. Meanwhile, I can sense that rabid K-Staters like Dr. Don, Laurie, Dane, Erin and Katelyn Musil of Blue Rapids already are formulating verbal bullets.
And we’ll all laugh like the dickens, which is why this rivalry generally is so doggone enjoyable.
You take an organization and remove nearly 130 years of experience and expertise and there’s bound to be a gigantic gap.
That’s what will happen to the KU Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Science this spring with the formal retirement of Carol Zebas (28 years), Phil Huntsinger (28 years), longtime head man Wayne Osness (35 years) and Bob Lockwood (37 years). They are four of only 17 faculty members who have gone the full route in the 103-year-old history of the KU “physical education” sequence. You don’t overcome that overnight. It takes a lot of promotions, newcomers and graduate assistants to fill that bill.
All these people have made innumerable contributions to KU, the community and the state; lots of folks will be calling them for advice and guidance, including professorial newcomer Bob Frederick. One of the problems of senior status is that when you finally know a few answers, nobody asks the questions.
I know the others but I guess I have the closest affinity to Bob Lockwood, a native of Lawrence. Watched him perform as a gymnastics star at Lawrence High and KU and then remained conversant with his accomplishments as a KU coach of gymnastics, volleyball and wrestling. Bob won All-America honors in volleyball at KU and for 29 years was an excellent manager of Lawrence’s outdoor aquatic center. He continues teaching kids gymnastics, where he made an all-state splash at LHS.
I never knew the upbeat Bob as a sentimentalist, but recently when a boyhood pal (and another great athlete), Doyle Schick, died, Lockwood paid tribute to Doyle in a touching Journal-World letter that brought tears to my eyes. Nobody else but Bob could have written that, or as well.
Best wishes to the Phys Ed Four. They’ve earned golden moments.
