Since when is showing the community you care a difficult thing to do?

Prior to Free State High’s 23-14 football victory Friday over Shawnee Mission West, Firebirds coach Bob Lisher was given a somewhat unexpected news flash when he showed up at Kansas University’s Memorial Stadium for the game.

KU officials weren’t going to open the visiting locker room for Free State to use.

Lisher, surprised and justifiably upset that nobody definitively told him ahead of time, had to corral his troops in an open area of asphalt outside of the unused KU locker room for pregame and halftime. It was that, or gather his team behind the south end zone in a tent that lacked lighting, a necessity after the sun goes down.

Talk about options.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” Lisher said, “that the high school football teams at this facility can’t have a locker room.”

Once again, a KU athletics department starving for fan support and revenue committed a public-relations blunder. It went out and alienated the north half of Lawrence, where season-ticket holders lurk, where KU graduates are plentiful, and where one guy who KU coach Mark Mangino is recruiting, Free State’s Dain Dillingham, plays football.

I’m sure Dillingham had nothing but great things to say about the asphalt outside of the Memorial Stadium locker rooms.

Brad Nachtigal, director of facilities and events for the KU athletics department, said the visiting locker room was closed because of Saturday’s Kansas-Jacksonville State football game. The Gamecocks already had moved in to the locker room before Free State’s game Friday.

“Generally, when KU is on the road, they like to have their locker room on Friday night,” Nachtigal said. “That’s standard practice in Division I.”

That’s fine. But couldn’t someone have told Free State beforehand? Lisher said he heard it was a possibility the locker room would be off limits, but, “We were never notified for sure.”

What gives?

“I guess it’s my fault,” FSHS athletic director Steve Grant said. “I mistakenly figured no news was good news.”

KU raised its rent to $3,700 for each game Free State plays at Memorial Stadium this year, despite making the KU locker room off limits for the first time, and making the availability of the visiting locker room hit-and-miss, apparently. When asked if the bill from Friday’s game was any lower thanks to KU’s offering fewer services, Grant said no.

“But we may fight that,” he said.

And they should.

Instead of giving Free State its money’s worth — a comfortable locker room that blocks out the noise of pregame and halftime — KU officials instead offered the Firebirds a couple of portable toilets, a dark tent and a drawing board to aid Lisher in his coaching.

Oh, yeah, and access to a large patch of asphalt.

The thought of Free State and several Sunflower League opponents, including Lawrence High Oct. 24, playing at Memorial Stadium this season generated great excitement among high school players.

But after the second-class treatment, like the Firebirds received Friday, many of them undoubtedly long for Haskell Stadium, where facilities are aging, the field is often torn up, but the players and coaches are at least respected a little bit.

For $3,700 a game, Free State and its opponents deserve as much from ol’ KU.