Mayer: Offense depends on line

Analysts keep saying Kansas University will win more football games when its offensive “skill players” get more productive and consistent. They mean quarterbacks, running backs, fullbacks and receivers, the usual suspects. Not with me.

The bedrock skill players operate from tackle to tackle with help from tight ends who can block an opponent into the next century. My nominees are tackles Matt Thompson, Anthony Collins, Cesar Rodriguez and Scott Haverkamp; guards Ryan Cantrell, Travis Dambach, Bob Whitaker and Haverkamp; centers David Ochoa and Cantrell. OK, if they’re blocking a lot and catching a little, toss in tight ends Derek Fine and Russell Brorsen.

Onetime Kansas coach J.V. Sikes was the first to educate me on how nothing big happens on offense until linemen master the thrust, the timing, the finesse and degree of unity to make the glamour boys draw the cheers. “Those guys from tackle to tackle need to be thinking alike, and moving as one, if we’re gonna score touchdowns,” J.V. often said. Don Fambrough, a great KU guard-linebacker in two-way days, was a Sikes assistant, and quick to agree.

Another advocate of that philosophy was icon Paul Brown, whose offensive linemen worked wonders in helping Cleveland fullback Jim Brown and quarterback Otto Graham achieve superstardom. Brown always called Mike McCormack, a Kansas hall of famer, the finest offensive lineman he ever coached, or ever saw. Mike took what he learned under Sikes and Fambrough in 1948-49-50 and had a brilliant career as a pro player, coach and executive.

Still on skill in the trenches, Sikes and Co. never had a better bunch than in 1950, when the Jayhawks smashed every existing school record for offensive line achievement. KU averaged about 310 yards rushing per game at a time when only superpowers like Oklahoma could come close.

A tip of the hat to those guys: Ends Lyn Smith and Bill Schaake, tackles McCormack and Bob Talkington; guards Dolph Simons Jr., George Mrkonic and George Kennard, and center Wint Winter, the old Wint. All except Talkington and Mrkonic came from Kansas or the Kansas City area.

If the 2005 offensive linemen come anywhere close today to the skill level of those ’50 bulldozers, that 36-year anvil dropped on KU’s shoulders will be gone by sundown.

¢ Paid college athletes? Always been with us. I’m talking 100 years ago, and Nebraska was the alleged villain. Kansas knocked off the series with the Cornhuskers in 1904 and 1905 until the “managers” at the two schools could meet and satisfy KU that the Huskers weren’t slipping something extra to their warriors, or at least wouldn’t use the hirelings against KU. The series resumed in 1906 when Bert Kennedy’s Lawrencians edged NU 8-6 at Lincoln.

KU remains NU’s whipping boy with its 21-87-3 advantage. Is victory No. 22 in the wind?

¢ With Nebraska struggling, there may not be as much Husker Red in the stands today. Still, that hue will still dominate. That’s always to the advantage of those vendors who sell Husker gear from suitcases around the Memorial Stadium area. People who can’t get tickets for NU in Lincoln come to Lawrence because they can see their darlings at least once a season. Hucksters at the NU memorabilia sites in Lincoln many times don’t do as well as they do in Lawrence because so many Lincolnites already have their novelties.