Probably you’ve heard of the spin and no-spin approach to public affairs as spotlighted by broadcasting megamouth Bill O’Reilly. I recently got a double-whammy spin from a pair of Kansas State-oriented sources, who either are terribly correct or borderline delusional. You decide.

Some time back, I noted that it’s understandable if Kansas University faculty members are uncomfortable that the average full professor earns something like $84,000 a year while the average assistant football coach pulls down around $105,000.

At last check, KU’s $21,000 differential compares to $48,000 at Oklahoma and $43,000 at Texas.

Then I noted that, for all their merits, coaches are a lot less likely to cure the major ills of the world than the academicians. And that maybe the latter are justified if they resent the huge athletic outlays.

Wasn’t long before I heard from Con Colbert, now an associate athletic director at New Mexico University. He held the same position at Kansas State from 1976 to 1984 and he made some intriguing points. Con wrote:

“I … would like to reply to your statement that coaches won’t come up with cures for cancer and AIDS, or the secrets of ALS, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”

Now the spin, or no-spin, depending on your perspective.

Continues Colbert: “I do know that Bill Snyder (KSU football coach) came up with the cure to stop the mass exodus of students from KSU in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I’m not sure how far the enrollment had dropped. I’m guessing around 6,000 students. That represented a huge amount of funding for KSU and, of course, the jobs of many professors and associates.

“Some of these were always critical of athletics. Because of Bill Snyder, the enrollment has returned to near that of the Jack Hartman and Lon Kruger era (basketball) of 21,000 students. Contributions to the KSU Foundation have increased dramatically and the rolls of active KSU alumni have swollen.

“It would be hard to put a value on Coach Snyder’s contribution to KSU. This would also apply to his assistant coaches who have helped build KSU into a nationally recognized football program. I guess my point is that coaches and academicians contribute to their institutions in different ways and it is hard to compare their respective remuneration.”

My first reaction was that this was pure jock talk, a glitzy spin by a person in sports trying to justify what some consider unjustifiable. Isn’t this what you’d expect somebody in the field to come up with, faculty people be damned?

But let’s go to the guy in the front office in Manhattan? President Jon Wefald’s been the major mover in giving coach Snyder what he wants and needs to produce big-time teams. KSU once was rated the absolute worst major football program in college history.

Sports Illustrated fairly recently did a piece on relative newcomers to the gridiron elite. The article noted that during his 17-year tenure, Wefald has overseen the remarkable transformation of Division I-A’s all-time losingest program into a perennial top-10 powerhouse. Wefald contends it has reshaped the morale of an entire community.

“When I got here, there was a sense of futility,” Wefald told an SI reporter. “If the old administration had stayed on here for three more years, I think football would have been dropped. We would have no marching band, and we’d be at about 12,000 students today.”

Wefald and friends such as Con Colbert stress that since 1986 Kansas State’s enrollment has increased from about 13,000 to 23,000, its fundraising has gone from $7 million a year in ’86 to $83 million in 2002-03 and the city of Manhattan’s economy has grown exponentially.

Doggone impressive figures, and they tend to validate the views of guys like Colbert. Maybe there’s more no-spin here than I thought.

Only thing is, can football get all the credit for Kansas State’s admirable status or would enrollment have stabilized or grown anyway? After all, KU and Kansas State still provide about the best bargains you can find in higher education. With economic crunches that might prevent kids from going to so-called prestige schools and making them look at Lawrence and Manhattan, wouldn’t KSU have done pretty well anyway? And what the hell were the faculty and staff doing all this time? Nothing?

KU has had four winning football seasons since Don Fambrough left in 1981. All — 1991, 1992, 1994 and 1995 — were under Glen Mason. Four winners in 22 years. Did local enrollment nosedive and contributions dry up?

Ah, you say, from 1984 through 2003, KU had great, scintillating basketball under Larry Brown and Roy Williams; that made up for the lack of sizz from the gridiron. Could be, as K-State has emerged as a “football school” after its once-proud basketball heritage floundered, and Kansas is regarded as a “basketball school” since football has struggled, particularly since the last winning year of 1995.

Alumni-friend contributions? Would they have been chopped liver for K-State without its football and would KU have been shortchanged without its basketball?

How many faculty people who might some day produce those miracles we dream about were enabled to operate because of the big salaries and benefits handed out through the KSU and KU athletic programs?

Spin or no-spin? As Satchel Paige used to say: “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”