A little bit of everything you wanted to know about Kansas University football …

Opponent Wanted: After back-to-back years of 12-game schedules, an 11-game slate will return in 2004, and the Jayhawks still are looking for an NCAA Division I-A foe. KU has non-league games against Tulsa (Sept. 4) and at Northwestern (Sept. 18), and is trying to fill the Sept. 11 slot.

“We really can’t schedule a I-AA school because we can’t count that toward bowl eligibility next year,” associate athletic director Jim Marchiony said.

That’s because KU is counting this year’s 41-6 victory over Jacksonville State, and I-AA wins can be used for bow-eligibility purposes only once every four years. …

Back to the Past: Traditionalists will love the return of Missouri to the final weekend of the 2004 season (Nov. 20). For decades, the Jayhawks and Tigers collided on the last Saturday of the season, but the practice ended in 1996 when the Big 12 Conference was formed. Now the KU-MU finale is back.

Whither Homecoming: University officials prefer to hold homecoming in October, but KU has only one home game during that month. It’s Oct. 9 against Kansas State, but that’s also the weekend of the NASCAR races in Kansas City, meaning hotel and motel space probably will be scarce. KU has an open date Oct. 16, but doesn’t want to fill it because fall break falls on that weekend. On paper, the best options for homecoming are Sept. 25 against Texas Tech and Nov. 6 against Colorado.

Return of the Tougher Trio: From a competitive standpoint, the Jayhawks will face a more rugged conference slate in ’04 because Kansas will regain the Texas-Oklahoma-Texas Tech cycle of Big 12 South teams while losing Baylor, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State.

Show Them the Money: Bonuses are customary for coaching staffs in the wake of bowl bids, and it’s likely Mark Mangino and his cadre will be rewarded once a bid is confirmed. However, no determinations have been made yet, according to Marchiony.

Northwestern in Limbo: Way back on Aug. 30 when Kansas and Northwestern tangled in a steady rain at Memorial Stadium, nobody expected either team would finish with a 6-6 record and become bowl eligible. Yet while Kansas is virtually certain of receiving an invitation — the Tangerine Bowl probably — Northwestern has to keep its fingers crossed. The Wildcats will need the Big Ten to send two teams to the BCS to open up a spot in a Big Ten-affiliated bowl, most likely the Dec. 26 Motor City Bowl in Detroit.

Jax State Jubilant: Jacksonville State finished with an 8-3 record and will meet Western Kentucky in the I-AA playoffs Saturday. It’s the Alabama school’s first postseason appearance since climbing to I-AA status in 1995. Jax State also won its first Ohio Valley Conference championship.

Whittemore Back in Stats, Too: Bill Whittemore not only returned to the field Saturday, the KU quarterback returned to NCAA statistics because he was able to play in three-fourths of KU’s games. Whittemore trails only Texas Tech’s B.J. Symons in total offense with an average of 288.0 yards per game — a number that would have been higher if Whittemore hadn’t been hurt in the first quarter of the K-State game. Whittemore had just 45 yards against the K-State. Whittemore’s biggest game was the 50-47 overtime loss to Colorado when he amassed 483 yards.

Crowd Count: KU’s announced average home football attendance was 37,750. Last year’s average crowd was listed at 36,083, but the official accounting conducted months after the season showed the paid crowds were actually about 10,000 fewer than that.

Al Bohl Update: The man who hired Mangino now lives in St. Augustine, Fla., where his wife, Sherry, is an elementary school teacher. Bohl, who was fired in April after just 20 months as KU athletic director, has completed about 100 pages of a novel about college athletics, according to his son Brett. Bohl has plenty of time to write because he doesn’t have to work. KU is obligated to pay his $255,000 annual salary through June 30 of next year.

No Grid Joy for Roy: Is Roy Williams a jinx? Kansas was 2-10 in Williams’ last season as KU men’s basketball coach and darned if this fall North Carolina didn’t finish 2-10, including a season-ending loss to perennial dungeon-dweller Duke.