Sitting around a couple of bunched tables on the second floor at Molly McGee’s restaurant/watering hole, the five women came not to discuss the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon or the saber-toothed tiger.

On this rainy Friday night, with the Kansas University football home opener less than 24 hours away, the quintet of females had gathered to prevent the KU Quarterback Club from becoming extinct.

Last August, KU athletic department officials turned the school’s quarterback club into a dinosaur, opting for family picnics instead. Once a weekly ritual, the quarterback club concept had evolved into a more or less a bi-weekly function as the 21st Century dawned.

“Some old-timers wish we’d continue the quarterback club format,” said Richard Konzem, senior athletic director, “but we’ve found the picnic approach is more effective. The quarterback club is kind of a thing of the past.”

Perhaps the quarterback club concept is no longer relevant, but try telling that to the five women who showed up wearing Jayhawk-festooned apparel.

(By the way, I wouldn’t call them old-timers because that would not be politically correct. Let’s just say they are young-timers in terms of their exuberance.)

All five are former quarterback clubbers with fond memories of past gatherings. Rusty Thomas, for instance, remembers the meeting when she asked coach Glen Mason if he ever planned to leave Kansas.

“He said he wasn’t going anywhere,” Thomas said, smiling, “and the next week he went to Georgia.”

Not for long, though. That was in 1995. A week after Georgia announced the hiring, Mason changed his mind. A year later, after nine years on Mount Oread, Mason bolted for Minnesota.

No one knows who the first KU football coach to attend quarterback club meetings was, but it appears Terry Allen, who did four of them last season, will be the last.

It is not mandatory that the head coach attend every quarterback club meeting. It’s OK to send an assistant coach from time to time. But on this gridiron Good Friday, the five female faithful settled for Jay Hinrichs, director of the Williams Fund who promised he would mention their quest to keep the format alive in future mailings.

Then again, can it really be a quarterback club without someone from the football staff on hand?

“We don’t know what to call it,” said Becky Kastrup, one of the five participants. “The Un-Quarterback Club?”

“How about WOF?,” replied Laura Katich who was sitting next to Kastrup.

“WOF? What does that stand for?” Kastrup queried.

“Women of Football,” Katich said, smiling.

The others Thomas, Sharon Murry and Bev Mater also seemed to like that suggestion.

By whatever name, though, they want to meet again before the Colorado game on Oct. 12. The night before is out, however, because that’s Late Night with Roy Williams and these women, for all their football fervor, are KU men’s basketball fans, too (who among the KU faithful isn’t?)

And so they agreed on Wednesday, Oct. 9, as the date for their next gathering.

“If we can get enough people, we’ll get a room somewhere,” Thomas said. “Hopefully, we can build this up.”

As it stands now, they have perpetuated, in spirit, the oldest, established, permanent, floating KU Quarterback Club in Lawrence. Are they a skeleton crew holding down the fort until the cavalry arrives? Or are they sitting inside a neo-Alamo?