Someone like bridge guru Charles Goren surely knows how unusual it is to be dealt a hand with one ace and not a single face card. No kings, no queens, no jacks … just a dozen numbered cards.

You certainly wouldn’t bid with that hand and you probably wouldn’t answer your partner’s bid, either.

That reminds me of Kansas University’s success in athletics this season. Men’s basketball is the ace, and the remaining sports are the non-face cards.

The only good news about the Jayhawks’ overall performance during the 2002-2003 Big 12 Conference season is that only one sport — football — finished last in league standings.

Still, except for men’s basketball, the closest the Jayhawks came to a league championship was a fourth-place finish by the women’s track team at the Big 12 Indoor. It’s possible, but not probable, that KU’s female tracksters will improve on that placing at the Big 12 Outdoor in a couple of weeks.

Parenthetically, it should be noted the KU swimmers finished fourth at the Big 12 Championships, but only six league schools sponsor women’s varsity swimming.

In another vein, except for basketball, not a single male varsity sport managed to crack the first division of league standings. Even men’s golf, annually a KU pride and joy, staggered to an eighth-place finish at the conference championships.

Under first-year baseball coach Ritch Price, the Jayhawks have won more than 30 games, but they won’t finish in the first division of league standings and they still aren’t guaranteed a berth in the postseason tourney.

Even worse than the Jayhawks’ poor overall showing in conference competition are the embarrassing numbers in the Border War, a corporate-concocted contest manufactured last summer with the stated purpose of enhancing the rivalry between Kansas and Missouri.

The first Border War has been a cruel joke on Kansas. With only outdoor track left to be counted, Missouri has a stunning 29.5 to 8 lead, a chasm caused primarily by MU’s dominance in women’s sports. KU’s men actually have a 7 to 6.5 lead over the Mizzou men, but the Tigers have fashioned an almost unbelievable 23 to 1 bulge in women’s competition. MU’s women have beaten KU like a drum.

All in all, though, except for men’s basketball, Kansas is an also-ran in the Big 12 Conference — an indisputable fact that will hit the new KU athletic director right between the eyes.

“There is no excuse,” KU interim AD Drue Jennings said, “for us to excel in men’s basketball and struggle in the other sports.”

Sure, it would help to have better facilities — the new Anderson Family Strength and Health Center has healed one black eye on KU’s recruiting face, especially for football — but the incoming AD must be someone who won’t be satisfied with the status quo.

“We need someone,” Jennings said, “who can get a fire in his belly.”

You can’t have a fire without fuel, though, and the fuel driving college athletic departments is money.

Right now, Kansas doesn’t have enough money to start work on a softball stadium, build an indoor tennis facility, renovate its soccer field, build a boathouse for rowing or install a video board in Allen Fieldhouse.

Thanks to a 15-year bond incurred for renovating Memorial Stadium and Allen Fieldhouse, the KU athletic department’s borrowing power is maxed out. Six dollars from every KU football and men’s basketball ticket sold through 2013 will be used to pay off that bond. That’s basically one-fifth of every ticket sold.

Where KU wants to be isn’t where KU is today, and it will take a blazing belly and plenty more to reach that level.