Mark Mangino answered 28 questions during the half hour or so he stood in front of a microphone during Kansas University football’s media day.
Question No. 26 was about the Jayhawks’ schedule.
That’s further proof nobody cares who you play. All people care about is how many you win.
When Kansas won half its 2003 regular-season games against what was judged the Big 12 Conference’s least-difficult schedule, nobody cared who the Jayhawks played.
Now that the Jayhawks have what has been determined to be the league’s most difficult schedule — at least one publication dubs KU’s slate THE toughest in the nation — it’s the same old story. Who cares? Let’s talk how many wins.
Mangino treats the schedule he has been dealt — and I’m talking primarily about the Big 12 portion — like the weather. You can talk and talk and talk about it, but there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
“What’s so tough about the schedule?” Mangino quipped with a smile in answer to Wednesday’s Question No. 26. “They’re not going to have guns out there. They can only send 11 guys out there.”
True, but some of those teams have 11 guys who can run like the wind and knock your block off.
If you ask me to name the four Big 12 schools I would least like to play year in and year out, I’ll tell you Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and Kansas State. Only two conference schools will have to play all four of those teams this fall. One is Kansas. The other is Texas Tech. But the Red Raiders also have perennial punching bag Baylor to kick around. Kansas doesn’t.
On paper, the only school Kansas should beat up on is Iowa State, the lone Big 12 school that failed to defeat a conference foe in 2003. But I expect the Cyclones will be improved. In fact, they could be this year’s Kansas — the team that rises from the dead as the Jayhawks did and go to a bowl game.
Iowa State? Why not? The Cyclones inherited the schedule KU had last year. In fact, it’s almost as if ISU traded Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M to Kansas for Baylor, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State.
Not that I expect Iowa State to win six games. That’s virtually impossible with only 11 games scheduled this year instead of 12. Kansas didn’t win its bowl-qualifying sixth in 2003 until the 12th game.
Basically, Mangino has adopted the only strategy he can when it comes to the 2004 schedule.
“This is the Big 12,” he said. “This is who you play. If you want to get better, you’ve got to beat some of those teams.”
Has the Kansas program, now in its third year under Mangino, reached the stage where it can beat some, or any, of those teams?
Not really. Not until the defense, shredded to bits by North Carolina State in the Tangerine Bowl, reaches a higher competitive level, and it’s unreasonable to expect so much improvement so fast. In the Big 12, you can find plenty of productive offenses, but not so many stringent defenses. You know who had the best defenses in the Big 12 — the schools whose fans talked BCS every week.
If you look at the Jayhawks’ schedule dispassionately, you have to concede they’ll be fortunate to win four games. If you look at KU’s slate optimistically, you might see five victories.
Since the Big 12 was formed in 1996, Kansas is 2-22 against the Big Four. The two wins were over Oklahoma — one in ’96, the other in ’97. Putting it another way, KU has dropped 19 straight to the Big Four.
If Kansas should defeat one of those four this fall, it would be regarded as a building block. If the Jayhawks win two against the Big Four, Mangino is a lock for Big 12 coach of the year. If KU should happen to stun three of the four, Mangino is a cinch for national coach of the year.
What if the Jayhawks would win all four? Let’s just say it would happen soon enough after the election for the next president to have time to name Mangino Secretary of Defense.