Mayer: Defense has fiery attitude

You’re familiar with how that irascible Tasmanian Devil skitters around like a balloon you blow up and let go, looking for somebody to gonk, zonk or bonk. They had to use force to keep singer Al Jolson in check before it was time to let him face off with the audiences he worshipped. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in their heyday required the Mongol Hordes to keep them in the wings before showtime, so great was their love of crowds.

Some folks love to get into action so much they go a little nuts before they’re turned loose. Put the current Kansas University football defense into that category. If this outfit had the choice, it would be on the field all the time, so deeply does it love its job.

Don’t know if you noticed during the Missouri and Nebraska games, but the Jayhawk restrictioneers practically were grabbing at the coaches’ sleeves demanding to get back into harness. They seemed peeved and pained when they had to relinquish the combat effort to the offensive guys. They love their work so much they almost resent the fill-ins.

May the offense and special teams become increasingly infected with such fever.

Kansas once had a reverse of this condition. When pass-happy J.V. Sikes was coach from 1948 to ’53, he loved offense so much that he would stalk the sidelines and grumble: “I wish to hell they (the opponents) would hurry up and score so we can get the ball back!” Texas Tech’s Mike Leach has a carbon-copy philosophy.

The Jayhawk defense is impassioned, impatient and intolerant of not being personally involved. So KU today is at Texas with a better chance to upset the Longhorns than any of us dreamed three weeks ago. Then the Jayhawks have every reason to believe they can deflate the swirling Iowa State Cyclones.

In the movie “Champion,” Kirk Douglas’ trainer would watch his boxer’s title quest and remark: “I love to watch a good boy work.” How could Crimson and Blue devotees not be head-over-heels in love with these 2005 KU defensive dervishes?

Texas holds a 5-2 lead on Kansas in this series, inaugurated in 1901, and there isn’t a whale of a lot of Jayhawk-Longhorn lore. There was that hose-job KU got from a miserable officiating blunder which last year cost it the game. But not a lot of other history. Still, there are three KU connections with Austin that are worth mentioning.

Don Fambrough lettered at UT in 1942 before entering the Army Air Corps, then returned with Ray Evans to become a KU legend. From Longview, Don was born and bred to go to Austin, until Evans convinced him he’d be much better off here. Which he was.

Jack Mitchell from Arkansas City, Kan., was on the 1942 Texas team that beat Georgia Tech, 14-7, in the Jan. 1, 1943, Cotton Bowl. Jack entered military service, later to become an All-America quarterback at Oklahoma in the late 1940s and head coach at Wichita, Arkansas and Kansas. George Sauer Jr., the son of the 1946-47 Kansas coach, caught eight passes to help the New York Jets upset Baltimore in that 1969 Super Bowl stunner. Sauer Jr. was a Longhorn star first.

Texas has had all-stars running out its ears. Mitchell and Fambrough were around in the days of the great Jack Crain, Pete Layden – but my favorite Texas ex was hard-living All-American Bobby Layne, of pro-hall-of-fame status via Detroit and Pittsburgh. What a clutch performer!