The late Franklin Murphy said often as Kansas University chancellor that being head of a major school would be far easier if there were no medical school or athletic department to deal with.

Dr. Murphy headed up the medical school before becoming chancellor in 1951, so he knew that territory well. Then he was deeply involved in Jayhawk athletics during his tenure. The resourceful Murphy got through it pretty well before taking the UCLA chancellorship.

Current chancellor Bob Hemenway may consider whatever problems exist at the medical school quite minor in comparison to the hassles the athletic operation has encountered in the past three years or so. The chancellor and the academic-administrative side of the coin on the Hill have been far more immersed in that situation than they ever should have been.

New athletic director Lew Perkins didn’t ease the pressure on Hemenway when he recently declared that even though there was an athletic board of merit, Lew answered directly to the chancellor. That’s right, because all the categories at KU officially radiate from Strong Hall. But Hemenway probably wishes the ties weren’t quite as direct and notable as they seem now.

Considering dicey personnel and financial entanglements, the various donnybrooks over ticketing and donor status and athletic board resentment about being passed over and kept in the dark, the chancellor’s athletic plate is a lot fuller than he’d choose.

For the most part, Franklin Murphy, with the ameliatory Dutch Lonborg as AD, went through an era of good feeling with the jock contingent. You can be sure Hemenway wishes the same applied to him and hopes it somehow gets that way soon. He’s had all the grief he wants.

I reflect back to the relationship of KU athletics with the rest of the Hill contingents in past years and wish things again could be as pleasant and amiable. For years, faculty rep Laurence Woodruff, Lonborg and their ilk moved things along smoothly. While faculty people rose up in opposition from time to time to protest something they considered out of line, there never was a perpetually stormy climate such as that prevailing now.

You had the Del Brinkmans, Del Shankels and other smart and stable folks of that caliber working between Strong Hall and the jocks, and it went pretty well. Sure, there were professors who indicated they thought athletes were getting preferred treatment. They believed coaches and their aides were being paid too much in proportion to what good teachers and administrators were getting. Are they ever now!

There’s no perfect wave on any campus. But more often than not, KU differences were resolved without the public airing of dirty, or at least soiled, linen we’re getting now.

One of the really bright spots is that there truly are outstanding non-athletic people who want things to smooth out and go well. Take Don Green, the distinguished professor who now is faculty rep to the Big 12 Conference. Others on that athletic board have deep loyalty and interest and should not be bypassed by a perceived carpetbagger making $400,000 a year-plus.

John Ferraro, Mary Lee Hummert, Renate Mai-Dalton, Tom Mulinazzi, Bedru Yimer, Andrew Debicki, Bill Tuttle, Don Steeples, Theresa Klinkenberg. These folks aren’t just pushover sausages dying to serve as “yes” folks; they are willing to deal and discuss and arbitrate.

The chancellor and the athletic director have tremendous human resources at their disposal. They need to draw them into the web rather than letting them drift. There are lots of lumps in the rug to smooth out; it has been a long time since public animosity for KU was as strong as it is now. But, to borrow a Colorado basketball player’s assessment, it’s all “doable” if the devoted and able people are given the full chance for input.

For nearly 14 years, things went along pretty well with the low-key Bob Frederick as athletic director. Freddy wasn’t any Donald Trump, but he kept people from each other’s throats, the way Dutch Lonborg could do. While football was far from what it needed to be, other things did reasonably well. The public now and then might have been sullen, but it wasn’t bordering on mutinous as it is now.

Hemenway got a foot caught in the door when he let Glen Mason come back from the Georgia job while Frederick was here trying to hire a new football coach. The chancellor wasn’t helped when he pushed for Marian Washington’s hefty $235,000 basketball package and contract extension.

When Freddy was eased out, KU paid some outfit $75,000 to find an athletic director and it came up with Crushed Dove Al Bohl. That and friend Terry Allen’s firing rankled bell-cow basketball coach Roy Williams, a lot, and Hemenway rightly or wrongly took heavy heat for that. Bohl got the credit for hiring football’s Mark Mangino.

(Nothing, of course, riled faculty people more than the nearly $200,000 Hemenway chose to pay Janet Murguia in a created job as university relations director. Then KU contracted for another $200,000 to study what her costly operation should be doing.)

After Bohl was run off, Roy Williams bolted for home, a great hire was made in Bill Self and the heavily remunerated Perkins was brought in along with four of his also-pricey personal hirelings. The nasty basketball ticket egg hit the fan. It all could have been handled so much more kindly and gently. I have to think it would have been if the Don Greens et al had been consulted sooner and far more fully.

There are some damned good loyal, dedicated people up there who have not been used nearly or thoroughly enough. Turn them loose and let them perform.

Otherwise, chancellor Hemenway and Lew Perkins will continue to loom as the villains and KU is going to be playing serious catchup a lot longer than it needs to — to the point the damage could become irreparable, I fear.