There’s a flood of excitement and enthusiasm in and around the Kansas athletic program, and it’s been a long time since such an invigorating atmosphere prevailed.
Football has registered a more promising start than many expected. Volleyball and soccer are on a roll, and underlying it all is the fact that Bill Self’s basketball program could contend not only for the league title but a national championship. Further, reports indicate that The New Suits in Allen Fieldhouse have generated a bountiful surge toward hefty donations and meeting a record $35 million annual budget.
One of the people who doubtless is most joyous about all this is Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who has seen scads of fits and starts and setbacks regarding athletics, some key miscues of his own doing. If Hemenway isn’t saying a nightly prayer of thanks for Drue Jennings and Drue’s timely assistance, he should be.
Jennings, the onetime kick returner under Jack Mitchell in 1967, stepped onto the scene in 2002 to yank a lot of chestnuts from the fire and get the Jayhawks on a more tranquil and productive track. It’s not hard to see why Kansas City Power and Light functioned so well while Jennings was in charge.
KU was floundering under athletic director Al Bohl and was in the process of losing basketball coach Roy Williams, whom some foolishly figured was irreplaceable. There was Bohl’s departing Driveway Diaspora and Williams’s predictably tearful farewell, and the Jayhawk Nation seemed badly adrift in the horse-latitudes, near panic.
Sure, Bohl had factored in getting Mark Mangino to replace Terry Allen as football coach but there were too many other chinks in the armor for him to stay and be effective.
Somehow Jennings was convinced to come out of his state of retirement in Kansas City to anchor the effort to regroup. It wasn’t long before he lined up Self as the basketball coach, which could turn out to be one of the best hires KU has ever made. Bill has the personality, the temperament, the expertise, the charisma, toughness and charm to coach and recruit with the very best. I’m thinking we haven’t begun to see just how good KU can be under his guidance.
If Hemenway figured in the Bohl fiasco that led at least in part to Williams’s bolting for North Carolina, he sure came off looking good working with Jennings in the Self matter. The tide was turning.
But what about an athletic director? Good as he was, interim AD Jennings didn’t want to return to a 24-7 commitment such as he’d handled at KCPL.
Originally, the KU brain trust seemed to have hired Mike Carter, a lawyer friend of Bill Self from Tulsa. But on a Saturday night when the guy with an Oral Roberts background reconsidered, things suddenly changed. The Journal-World’s Gary Bedore got wind of an effort to sign Lew Perkins away from Connecticut and scooped everyone with the revelation. The new man wasn’t coming cheap, a whopping $400,000 to start, compared to Bohl’s equally outlandish $255,000. But Lew had a pedigree and was on board. He’d played basketball at Iowa and had been AD at Wichita State so he should know our “hick-and-rube” territory, right? Well, there is some dissent there, even if things currently may be looking good.
As soon as he could, Jennings left KU’s service to resume his life as a civilian. But he’d managed to bail out KU at a crucial time. Nobody should be more grateful than chancellor Hemenway. He then gave Perkins carte blanche to load up the wagons and begin a cold-blooded pursuit of the money it takes to cope with annual athletic budgets like the $70 million-plus at Texas — and equally impressive treasuries at Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Nebraska.
The Mangino football forces already were in action when Perkins arrived and the transition from Williams to Self in basketball was more seamless and bloodless than just about anybody could have expected. Perkins hit the ground running and engineered numerous personnel changes (there’s still fallout) as well as some fund-raising ventures which have rubbed a lot of good, faithful people the wrong way.
Good as the athletic record may look right now, KU has taken and continues to take a lot of harmful public-relations hits that will require a long time to repair. The vast majority of Kansas fans agree that the school couldn’t have made a better basketball move than Self. A lot of juries still are out on the long-range impact of Perkins and Co. (who’s now up to $420,000 per year … PLUS?).
But the deep Jayhawk loyalties of Jennings were put to great use at vital junctures and his stabilizing contributions factor heavily into whatever successes KU sports will register athletically and financially.
Back to Bohl and Fresno State, from which he came. Little wonder if Kansans have bad vibes about Fresno. First, it sent KU a smoke-and-mirrors athletic director who never quite grasped the picture; then FSU produced the fierce football team that butchered favored Kansas State the past week.
Kansas State under Bill Snyder has gained a reputation for scheduling non-league patsies to fatten its record, and maybe at one time Fresno looked like one of those. Not. Those guys can play with the biggies, and their upset of K-State only reinforces critics who jibe KSU about its easy-opponent penchant.
What amazes me is why so many K-Staters fall on the floor and turn blue when you mention their non-league cupcakes. Instead of being so darned touchy, they should take tremendous pride in the Wildcats’ 127-56-1 record since Snyder came in 1989, the bowl trips, the attention for being good instead of the once-worst program in the country.
In that same period, Kansas has gone 77-96-1 and has lost 11 in a row to K-State. Long-suffering KU followers would love to flash a 127-56-1 record even if the schedule was loaded with Mother Teresa Techs. Be proud, Wildcats, not so doggone heart-on-the-sleeve defensive!
