The picture remains vivid in my memory.
Kansas University athletic director Bob Frederick, football coach Glen Mason, men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and baseball coach Dave Bingham are standing together, all wearing smiles bright enough to illuminate a coal mine.
The year was 1993 and KU had made history by having its football team go to a bowl game, its men’s basketball team reach the NCAA Final Four and its baseball team participate in the College World Series.
Three Kansas teams. Three showcase events. Three reasons for alumni and friends to feel every penny they spent to achieve a KU degree and every dollar they sent to support the university were as important as bread on the table.
Those were halcyon days.
Yet what appeared to be KU’s ascension into the NCAA firmament was, we know now, a fluke and a cruel one at that. While men’s basketball has maintained a level of quality Williams is the only man in the picture who remains football and baseball have plunged into an abyss.
You know all about football, how KU poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into improving facilities mainly to remove the word decrepit from all references to Memorial Stadium only to have attendance drop in direct proportion to dwindling victories.
In the six seasons Kansas has belonged to the Big 12 Conference, the Jayhawks have won just a fourth of their football games (12-36). Only Baylor, the league’s lone private school, has a worse record. The Bears are an astonishingly bad 3-45 against conference foes. Even Iowa State, which won only four league games in its first four years in the Big 12, has a better conference record (13-35) now than Kansas.
Today KU has a new athletic director in Al Bohl, a man who is staking his reputation on rebuilding football. To do so, Bohl is throwing money at the problem, much like Kansas State did several years ago when no one at KSU was sure which would come first a winning football season or a snowstorm in Cuba.
Bohl isn’t likely to throw money at baseball, however, because baseball does not have the potential to generate revenue like football does. A winning baseball program would fill more seats, but you have to put a lot of fannies on the aluminum planks at Hoglund Ballpark to fund baseball fully. This year’s KU baseball budget was $574,000. Next year it will be $623,000.
Most of the increase will go for scholarships. In fact, a stiff boost in Kansas University’s in-state and out-of-state tuition mandated by legislative cutbacks will force the athletic department to cough up an estimated $350,000 more during the next fiscal year in order to absorb the tuition hike.
At least KU doesn’t have a baseball facility problem. Hoglund Ballpark, renovated about the same time as the football stadium, is an attractive, fan-friendly place. It’s not the best facility in the Big 12, but Hoglund Ballpark may do the best job of combining campus and baseball atmospheres because of its location next to Allen Fieldhouse.
Obviously, though, facilities haven’t been enough to attract baseball players who can be competitive in a league that has four warm-weather Texas schools and two Oklahoma schools with gilt-edged baseball traditions. All six of those schools qualified for the postseason tournament. Nebraska and Kansas State will join them. Missouri and Kansas players checked their uniforms in. At the same time, KU coach Bobby Randall checked out.
Colorado dropped the sport during Big Eight days and Iowa State gave up the ghost after the 2001 season. Kansas, meanwhile, has been content to retain baseball after scuttling men’s swimming and men’s tennis.
As tough as it has been for Kansas to compete in Big 12 football, it may be even tougher to make a resurgence in conference baseball. Still, if Nebraska and Kansas State can compete, why can’t Kansas?
When the new baseball sheriff comes to town he’ll inherit basically the same situation as Mark Mangino, the new marshall of football territory. This isn’t Dodge City, but it sure would be good to see another Wyatt Earp.
The picture remains vivid in my memory.
Kansas University athletic director Bob Frederick, football coach Glen Mason, men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and baseball coach Dave Bingham are standing together, all wearing smiles bright enough to illuminate a coal mine.
The year was 1993 and KU had made history by having its football team go to a bowl game, its men’s basketball team reach the NCAA Final Four and its baseball team participate in the College World Series.
Three Kansas teams. Three showcase events. Three reasons for alumni and friends to feel every penny they spent to achieve a KU degree and every dollar they sent to support the university were as important as bread on the table.
Those were halcyon days.
Yet what appeared to be KU’s ascension into the NCAA firmament was, we know now, a fluke and a cruel one at that. While men’s basketball has maintained a level of quality Williams is the only man in the picture who remains football and baseball have plunged into an abyss.
You know all about football, how KU poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into improving facilities mainly to remove the word decrepit from all references to Memorial Stadium only to have attendance drop in direct proportion to dwindling victories.
In the six seasons Kansas has belonged to the Big 12 Conference, the Jayhawks have won just a fourth of their football games (12-36). Only Baylor, the league’s lone private school, has a worse record. The Bears are an astonishingly bad 3-45 against conference foes. Even Iowa State, which won only four league games in its first four years in the Big 12, has a better conference record (13-35) now than Kansas.
Today KU has a new athletic director in Al Bohl, a man who is staking his reputation on rebuilding football. To do so, Bohl is throwing money at the problem, much like Kansas State did several years ago when no one at KSU was sure which would come first a winning football season or a snowstorm in Cuba.
Bohl isn’t likely to throw money at baseball, however, because baseball does not have the potential to generate revenue like football does. A winning baseball program would fill more seats, but you have to put a lot of fannies on the aluminum planks at Hoglund Ballpark to fund baseball fully. This year’s KU baseball budget was $574,000. Next year it will be $623,000.
Most of the increase will go for scholarships. In fact, a stiff boost in Kansas University’s in-state and out-of-state tuition mandated by legislative cutbacks will force the athletic department to cough up an estimated $350,000 more during the next fiscal year in order to absorb the tuition hike.
At least KU doesn’t have a baseball facility problem. Hoglund Ballpark, renovated about the same time as the football stadium, is an attractive, fan-friendly place. It’s not the best facility in the Big 12, but Hoglund Ballpark may do the best job of combining campus and baseball atmospheres because of its location next to Allen Fieldhouse.
Obviously, though, facilities haven’t been enough to attract baseball players who can be competitive in a league that has four warm-weather Texas schools and two Oklahoma schools with gilt-edged baseball traditions. All six of those schools qualified for the postseason tournament. Nebraska and Kansas State will join them. Missouri and Kansas players checked their uniforms in. At the same time, KU coach Bobby Randall checked out.
Colorado dropped the sport during Big Eight days and Iowa State gave up the ghost after the 2001 season. Kansas, meanwhile, has been content to retain baseball after scuttling men’s swimming and men’s tennis.
As tough as it has been for Kansas to compete in Big 12 football, it may be even tougher to make a resurgence in conference baseball. Still, if Nebraska and Kansas State can compete, why can’t Kansas?
When the new baseball sheriff comes to town he’ll inherit basically the same situation as Mark Mangino, the new marshall of football territory. This isn’t Dodge City, but it sure would be good to see another Wyatt Earp.
The picture remains vivid in my memory.
Kansas University athletic director Bob Frederick, football coach Glen Mason, men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and baseball coach Dave Bingham are standing together, all wearing smiles bright enough to illuminate a coal mine.
The year was 1993 and KU had made history by having its football team go to a bowl game, its men’s basketball team reach the NCAA Final Four and its baseball team participate in the College World Series.
Three Kansas teams. Three showcase events. Three reasons for alumni and friends to feel every penny they spent to achieve a KU degree and every dollar they sent to support the university were as important as bread on the table.
Those were halcyon days.
Yet what appeared to be KU’s ascension into the NCAA firmament was, we know now, a fluke and a cruel one at that. While men’s basketball has maintained a level of quality Williams is the only man in the picture who remains football and baseball have plunged into an abyss.
You know all about football, how KU poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into improving facilities mainly to remove the word decrepit from all references to Memorial Stadium only to have attendance drop in direct proportion to dwindling victories.
In the six seasons Kansas has belonged to the Big 12 Conference, the Jayhawks have won just a fourth of their football games (12-36). Only Baylor, the league’s lone private school, has a worse record. The Bears are an astonishingly bad 3-45 against conference foes. Even Iowa State, which won only four league games in its first four years in the Big 12, has a better conference record (13-35) now than Kansas.
Today KU has a new athletic director in Al Bohl, a man who is staking his reputation on rebuilding football. To do so, Bohl is throwing money at the problem, much like Kansas State did several years ago when no one at KSU was sure which would come first a winning football season or a snowstorm in Cuba.
Bohl isn’t likely to throw money at baseball, however, because baseball does not have the potential to generate revenue like football does. A winning baseball program would fill more seats, but you have to put a lot of fannies on the aluminum planks at Hoglund Ballpark to fund baseball fully. This year’s KU baseball budget was $574,000. Next year it will be $623,000.
Most of the increase will go for scholarships. In fact, a stiff boost in Kansas University’s in-state and out-of-state tuition mandated by legislative cutbacks will force the athletic department to cough up an estimated $350,000 more during the next fiscal year in order to absorb the tuition hike.
At least KU doesn’t have a baseball facility problem. Hoglund Ballpark, renovated about the same time as the football stadium, is an attractive, fan-friendly place. It’s not the best facility in the Big 12, but Hoglund Ballpark may do the best job of combining campus and baseball atmospheres because of its location next to Allen Fieldhouse.
Obviously, though, facilities haven’t been enough to attract baseball players who can be competitive in a league that has four warm-weather Texas schools and two Oklahoma schools with gilt-edged baseball traditions. All six of those schools qualified for the postseason tournament. Nebraska and Kansas State will join them. Missouri and Kansas players checked their uniforms in. At the same time, KU coach Bobby Randall checked out.
Colorado dropped the sport during Big Eight days and Iowa State gave up the ghost after the 2001 season. Kansas, meanwhile, has been content to retain baseball after scuttling men’s swimming and men’s tennis.
As tough as it has been for Kansas to compete in Big 12 football, it may be even tougher to make a resurgence in conference baseball. Still, if Nebraska and Kansas State can compete, why can’t Kansas?
When the new baseball sheriff comes to town he’ll inherit basically the same situation as Mark Mangino, the new marshall of football territory. This isn’t Dodge City, but it sure would be good to see another Wyatt Earp.
The picture remains vivid in my memory.
Kansas University athletic director Bob Frederick, football coach Glen Mason, men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and baseball coach Dave Bingham are standing together, all wearing smiles bright enough to illuminate a coal mine.
The year was 1993 and KU had made history by having its football team go to a bowl game, its men’s basketball team reach the NCAA Final Four and its baseball team participate in the College World Series.
Three Kansas teams. Three showcase events. Three reasons for alumni and friends to feel every penny they spent to achieve a KU degree and every dollar they sent to support the university were as important as bread on the table.
Those were halcyon days.
Yet what appeared to be KU’s ascension into the NCAA firmament was, we know now, a fluke and a cruel one at that. While men’s basketball has maintained a level of quality Williams is the only man in the picture who remains football and baseball have plunged into an abyss.
You know all about football, how KU poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into improving facilities mainly to remove the word decrepit from all references to Memorial Stadium only to have attendance drop in direct proportion to dwindling victories.
In the six seasons Kansas has belonged to the Big 12 Conference, the Jayhawks have won just a fourth of their football games (12-36). Only Baylor, the league’s lone private school, has a worse record. The Bears are an astonishingly bad 3-45 against conference foes. Even Iowa State, which won only four league games in its first four years in the Big 12, has a better conference record (13-35) now than Kansas.
Today KU has a new athletic director in Al Bohl, a man who is staking his reputation on rebuilding football. To do so, Bohl is throwing money at the problem, much like Kansas State did several years ago when no one at KSU was sure which would come first a winning football season or a snowstorm in Cuba.
Bohl isn’t likely to throw money at baseball, however, because baseball does not have the potential to generate revenue like football does. A winning baseball program would fill more seats, but you have to put a lot of fannies on the aluminum planks at Hoglund Ballpark to fund baseball fully. This year’s KU baseball budget was $574,000. Next year it will be $623,000.
Most of the increase will go for scholarships. In fact, a stiff boost in Kansas University’s in-state and out-of-state tuition mandated by legislative cutbacks will force the athletic department to cough up an estimated $350,000 more during the next fiscal year in order to absorb the tuition hike.
At least KU doesn’t have a baseball facility problem. Hoglund Ballpark, renovated about the same time as the football stadium, is an attractive, fan-friendly place. It’s not the best facility in the Big 12, but Hoglund Ballpark may do the best job of combining campus and baseball atmospheres because of its location next to Allen Fieldhouse.
Obviously, though, facilities haven’t been enough to attract baseball players who can be competitive in a league that has four warm-weather Texas schools and two Oklahoma schools with gilt-edged baseball traditions. All six of those schools qualified for the postseason tournament. Nebraska and Kansas State will join them. Missouri and Kansas players checked their uniforms in. At the same time, KU coach Bobby Randall checked out.
Colorado dropped the sport during Big Eight days and Iowa State gave up the ghost after the 2001 season. Kansas, meanwhile, has been content to retain baseball after scuttling men’s swimming and men’s tennis.
As tough as it has been for Kansas to compete in Big 12 football, it may be even tougher to make a resurgence in conference baseball. Still, if Nebraska and Kansas State can compete, why can’t Kansas?
When the new baseball sheriff comes to town he’ll inherit basically the same situation as Mark Mangino, the new marshall of football territory. This isn’t Dodge City, but it sure would be good to see another Wyatt Earp.
