You have to admire Kansas University football coach Mark Mangino for refusing to point fingers when his team can’t get the job done.

Criticism of OU coach Bob Stoops for running up the score on his good friend Mangino has abounded following KU’s 41-10 loss Saturday to No. 2 Oklahoma. The third-year KU coach blew off the accusations, saying he’d do the same thing if he were Stoops and adding, “We’ve got to keep them out of the end zone. That’s our job.”

It’s refreshing to hear someone lose like a winner.

Stoops warned he likely wouldn’t take it easy near the end of victories anymore. Oklahoma was third in last week’s Bowl Championship Series rankings, and that might be the worst place to be in the standings that take the top two teams to the national-championship game.

Margin of victory isn’t in any BCS computer formula, but it is important. Writers and coaches all over the country vote in the Top 25 polls, which weigh heavily in BCS computation.

“There is a point where you might have to score more when it gets down to trying to impress voters in other parts of the country that haven’t seen the game,” Stoops said last week.

At most, one or two voters Saturday were in Norman, Okla., to see the Sooners dominance. A 41-10 victory is a little more impressive than a 35-10 victory. With that in mind, Stoops kept his studs in at the end, and Jason White threw his fourth touchdown pass with 35 seconds left, putting OU up by 31.

It caused some disgust among Jayhawks fans. But why? If KU was worried about Oklahoma running up the score, then, by golly, don’t let them score.

Mangino agrees, and if you think it’s out of respect for Stoops, whom Mangino worked with at both Kansas State and Oklahoma, think again. He was asked the same question last December at the Tangerine Bowl, when North Carolina State smacked around KU, 56-26, in Orlando, Fla.

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“There’s no such thing as running it up,” Mangino said after that game. “If you can’t stop them, too bad.”

How refreshing. High school football should be the last stop for this type of sportsmanship, where the talent level often is out of one school’s control, where impressionable teenagers learn more important lessons than winning and losing, and where the players don’t play for large amounts of money — if not for themselves, then for their schools.

As the years go by, Mangino and his staff are starting to make this program their own with each new recruiting class that comes in. If they get walloped by a school like Oklahoma, they need to look in the mirror instead of griping about the other team not taking it easy on them.

Mangino gets that. It’s just a shame that he seems to be in the minority.