A few people — not a lot, but a few — called the Journal-World sports department this week to ask if Saturday’s Kansas-Kansas State football game would be televised.

It won’t be, not even on pay-per-view, but the mere fact a few Kansas fans want to watch the Jayhawks play the Wildcats on TV is at least a sign some believe K-State’s decade-long dominance of the Sunflower State series might be on the wane.

If you based Saturday’s game strictly on numbers, you would think the game should be a toss-up. Kansas is 5-2 and Kansas State is 5-3. Both teams received three votes in this week’s Associated Press poll. And yet the Wildcats are listed as roughly a three-touchdown favorite. Why is that? No doubt because of the ‘Cats’ total dominance over the last five years.

The realists — the people who know about college football and how it works — will have to be shown that Kansas won’t stick its tail between its legs and crawl away from the Wildcats. That’s been the Jayhawks’ recent history in this series, you know.

Kansas State has waxed Kansas mostly through intimidation.

Coaches won’t talk about the intimidation factor for public consumption and neither will players, but it’s there hovering over the Jayhawks like a nagging toothache, an albatross of immense unseen proportions.

In contemporary times, the defining moment of the Kansas-Kansas State series occurred Oct. 31, 1998, at Memorial Stadium.

On the first play of KU’s second series, quarterback Zac Wegner was sandwiched by K-State linebackers Jeff Kelly and Travis Litton. Wegner suffered a broken, split middle finger on his left (nonthrowing) hand — an ugly wound — as well as a concussion. Wegner’s season was over.

Kansas State sent a message that day, and Kansas read it loud and clear. Since then, the average score of the series has been: Kansas State 52, Kansas 7.

When Lew Perkins was named the Jayhawks’ athletic director last spring, he mentioned how he thought Kansas had lost its swagger, how the Jayhawks seemed resigned to their fate as also-rans in everything except men’s basketball. No more so than in the football series with Kansas State.

I’ll never forget the evening of Oct. 7, 2000. Kansas State had just whipped up on the Jayhawks, 52-13, at Memorial Stadium and KU coach Terry Allen allowed as how he was “disappointed” about the lopsided defeat — his third straight in which the ‘Cats had scored at least 50 points.

Disappointed? Allen had just been squashed for a purple hat trick and he was disappointed? He should have been infuriated. He should have vowed right then and there it would never happen again.

Hangover from that mentality led to Kansas State’s 64-0 pummeling of the Jayhawks under Mark Mangino last year in Lawrence. On that day, KSU coach Bill Snyder, reinforcing the intimidation factor, sent his first-string defenders on the field late to preserve the shutout.

Under Snyder, Kansas State has approached the Kansas game with the attitude the Sunflower State belongs to them. You want it, Kansas? Just try and take it away from us. This land is ours. Take it away from us at your own risk. On the flip side, KU’s approach has been: “Gee, I hope we don’t get beat too bad and we don’t get anybody hurt.”

Kansas has to change its attitude, and, if nothing else, the Jayhawks need to send a message to Kansas State, saying in effect: “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Until Kansas matches Kansas State on the swagger level, the beat will go on.