Anytime Kansas University and Kansas State clash in anything – even tiddlywinks – it’s a big deal in the Sunflower State. That includes, of course, Saturday’s football game in Manhattan.

And yet the best football game in the state this week may not be at KSU Stadium.

I’m talking about Thursday night’s Lawrence High-Olathe South battle of unbeatens at the Olathe District Activities Center.

Lawrence High is off to its best start since 1993, while Olathe South returns most of the skill players from the team that finished runner-up in Class 6A last year. If this were a college game, Lee Corso would babble semi-coherently about it.

Study the personnel of both teams and you’ll notice the Lions and Falcons are uncannily similar.

Each team has a returning starter at quarterback. Lawrence High’s Brian Heere and Olathe South’s Brady Croucher can throw, and each is a threat to run. More important, neither Heere nor Croucher is mistake-prone.

Then there are the running backs. O-South’s Devin Cummings and Tony Bryant have been called a “two-headed monster” by opposing coaches. If so, then Lawrence High has a monstrous tandem, too, in Nolan Kellerman and Nathan Hickey.

In fact, very little separates the teams’ ball-carrying twosomes. In the first five games, Cummings and Bryant have combined to rush for 1,100 yards and 15 touchdowns, while Kellerman and Hickey have totaled 1,070 yards and 13 touchdowns. That’s a wash.

Defensively, both teams boast size and strength in the line and at linebacker. Olathe South probably has the better kicker in Kyson Ginavan, but the Falcons don’t have anyone with the multiple skills of the Lions’ Brandon Lassiter.

Lassiter returns kicks, catches passes, runs reverses and, more important, smothers receivers. He’s as good a shutdown cornerback as you’ll see at the high school level.

At stake Thursday night will be the Sunflower League championship, or at least part of it, and the Lions haven’t reached that firmament since ’93.

Only the first six league games count in the standings and with four teams entering this week with 5-0 records, it’s unlikely there will be an outright champ.

None of the eight other Sunflower League football teams has a record better than 2-3. That includes Free State High, which has had the misfortune of having all four of the 5-0 teams on its schedule.

Meanwhile, Olathe South is the lone 5-0 team on the Lions’ schedule. Lawrence doesn’t have to play either Shawnee Mission West or Olathe East.

“It’s really the luck of the draw,” Lawrence High coach Dirk Wedd said. “We haven’t played West in four years, and it’s been two years since we played Olathe East. Two years ago, who would have known?”

Sunflower League football schedules are drawn up every two years based roughly on the two-year cycle of regional assignments. The Lions’ three regional foes are Washburn Rural, Topeka High and Free State.

As you can see, that means the Lawrence High-Free State game Oct. 21 at Memorial Stadium will not count as a league game. Neither will the Olathe East-Olathe South game Oct. 28, but, if nothing else, it should determine the champion of the city that arguably has more quality football teams than anywhere else in Kansas.