History probably will record the smartest thing Bob Frederick ever did was hire an obscure North Carolina assistant to be Kansas University’s men’s basketball coach in 1988.

You know his name. You know what he did.

In the same vein, I think it may be a couple of months too early to determine the dumbest thing Frederick, who served as KU’s athletic director in 1987-2001, ever has done.

Specifically, let’s wait until July 10. That will be a day after Frederick jumps on a bicycle and participates in the brutal “California Death Ride.”

What is the California Death Ride? Well, it’s not really a cycling race. It’s more of an endurance test — a 129-mile journey over five California mountain passes. All in all, the cyclists will have to climb about 15,000 feet.

Entrants — and the field, believe it or not, is full — have the option of riding one, two, three or four passes. If you ride all five, you receive a pin and a T-shirt.

Naturally, Frederick will attempt to make all five. I mean, why not? He’s only 65 years old.

Frederick has more or less been laying low since resigning as KU’s AD and going to work as an assistant professor in the School of Education, teaching sports-management courses. But he resurfaced this week during the National Collegiate Cycling Championships.

Frederick, who once served two years as chair of the prestigious NCAA Men’s Division One Basketball Committee, is listed as Event Liaison of the three-day NCCC event in and around Lawrence.

What is an event liaison? “I’m not sure,” Frederick told me. “All I know is I’ve been going to 7:30 a.m. Tuesday meetings for the last year, and I’m tired of it.”

He was joshing. No man who would sign up for the “California Death Ride” could possibly be tired of doing anything. In truth, as liaison, Frederick is providing many of his sports-management students to help run the event, giving them priceless on-the-job training.

In the meantime, Frederick is, of course, training for his July date with the California mountains. Time was when Frederick participated in grueling triathlons, but then his knees gave out and he had to concentrate on bicycling.

This probably was a good thing because the more time Frederick spends on a bicycle the more proficient he becomes. Back in the days when he had to worry about running and swimming as well as cycling, he spread himself too thin and, as a consequence, twice spread himself all over the pavement.

His first spill occurred in 1988 — the same year he hired Roy Williams — and all he did in that accident was break a clavicle and separate a shoulder.

Six years later, Frederick celebrated Father’s Day by barreling down the hill that leads to the road over Clinton Dam when he swerved to the right to avoid a car, slipped onto the soft shoulder and was thrown onto the rocks of the dam.

To this day, he remembers little of that scary incident.

“Someone stopped to help me and, I assume, called 911,” Frederick said. “I was in such a state of shock that I don’t know who it was. I’d love to find that person and personally thank him.”

The unknown Good Samaritan may have saved him. For sure, the protective headgear Frederick was wearing did.

“No doubt about the helmet,” he said. “The doctor told me it saved my life.”

Still, Frederick suffered three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken scapula and a concussion. The helmet, by the way, was totaled.

In the ensuing years, Frederick often has joked about being the poster boy for bicycle helmets, yet he remains passionate about their use. At the same time, he is one of the most vocal supporters of this weekend’s national collegiate cycling championships.

“We’ll have it here the next two years, too,” he said. “It’s the first time the U.S. Cycling Federation has had it in the same place three years in a row. That way it will enable the cyclists to learn the course. I think it’s really a good idea.”

A lot better idea, it seems to me, than participating in the “California Death Ride.”