Even younger people accustomed to enormous salaries and benefits for athletic personalities admit they’re startled that new Kansas State basketball coach Bob Huggins will reap at least $5 million over the next five years – providing he does nothing “which results in material injury to the reputation of the university.”

If the storied Huggy Bear keeps his nose clean and wins, he’ll top $5 million with ease.

Then you turn to older fans who recall the pay packages in the more distant past. They are downright shell-shocked by how things have changed – where assistant coaches at Kansas University make $25,000 or so more per year than the average full professor. At Oklahoma and Texas, that gap is closer to $50,000.

What brought this on is an item in our archives from July of 1951. It notes that Dr. Franklin D. Murphy, who had been dean of the KU Medical School, was moving into the Mount Oread chancellorship. The salary would go from the existing $14,000 to $15,000. Current chancellor Robert Hemenway gets $306,152, more than 20 times Murphy’s pay.

Then there is the $605,000 athletic director Lew Perkins draws. If he fulfills his six-year contract, through June 30, 2009, he gets a $1.3 million bonus. As of now his annual comp is something like $816,500.

Back to the Huggins package, KU’s Bill Self winds up with about $1.2 million with all his add-ons; football coach Mark Mangino is probably in the million-dollar range and also has bonus incentives. What they get is about the going rate except at places such as OU and Texas, where $2 million bundles are in place.

Return to 1957. Assistant Dick Harp was elevated to the head KU basketball job by Dr. Murphy and Dutch Lonborg for $7,500. Head assistant Jerry Waugh was paid $5,500. At Thanksgiving time of ’57, after football boss Chuck Mather left, KU pulled a stunner by luring Jack Mitchell away from Arkansas at the then-whopping $15,000 a year on a five-year contract.

You’d collapse listening to the hilarious Mitchell describe the nutty negotiations to get him here. His assistants didn’t want to leave Arkansas.

“But all my life, I dreamed of coaching at Kansas because I was a fan of (basketball great) Howard Engleman while we grew up in Arkansas City,” Jack recalls. “I told the assistants to do what they thought best and that I’d try to get them the best salaries possible. They reminded me that KU was a basketball school; I still wanted that job and I turned on the charm.

“Technically, KU wasn’t supposed to contact me, but Dutch and the chancellor swung it and we met at the Murphys’ house. I had prepared a list of about 30 things I had to have, like assistant salaries,” Jack says. “I handed the list to the chancellor, he gave it a quick glance, gave it to Dutch and said for him to make them happen. I ended up with what then was as big a salary as anyone in college was getting, $15,000, five years. What a night, what a deal!”

As for now, and WOW! A pair of basketball tickets runs $1,890, parking pass $240, $45 for handling, total $2,175, plus a contribution. Pragmatists declare Lew Perkins is worth every cent he’s getting; the money pot looks lush. But with all the budget-boosting, has anything else been lost?