Standing at the microphone Friday morning during a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new football facility, Kansas University athletic director Lew Perkins sent an “unbelievable thanks” out to John Hadl, chief fundraiser for the project.

“Thank you for the nice raise, Lew,” Hadl shouted back.

“You’ve earned well, John,” Perkins responded.

As he walked to his car after the ceremony, Hadl reflected on his first contact with head donor Tom Kivisto regarding the project that, when concluded, will be home for the football offices, video area, weight room, training and nutrition areas, an academic area and practice fields.

“I called him and asked him, ‘Would you have any interest in hearing about this project?’ He said, ‘Yeah, come on down (to Wichita).’ He’s a helluva guy, I knew that. But I thought, ‘He’s a basketball player. He’s not going to want to do this.’ The next day, after the meeting, he said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do it.’ I fell out of my chair of course, because it was a good number that I asked for.”

Did Hadl blink when he asked Kivisto for $10 million toward the project?

“I tried not to,” Hadl said. “He didn’t blink at all. He’s a dandy. He’s a great guy.”

Dana Anderson, longtime financial backer of the athletic department and a big contributor to the football complex, also heaped praise on Kivisto for being a basketball player who looked beyond the university’s most high-profile marketing tool.

“Tom and Dana both have a vision for the future and getting it done in the meantime,” Hadl said. “Both are successful people and that’s what I see every time I go out with these guys. They’re just smarter than we are. We all work hard, we all do everything we can, when you get right down to it, they’re just smarter than we are.”

From left, Dana Anderson, Sue Anderson, Julie Kivisto and Tom Kivisto display honorary jerseys during a groundbreaking ceremony for Kansas University's new football complex. The ceremony took place Friday just south of Memorial Stadium.

An emotional Mark Mangino, the brains behind KU’s football resurgence, sent gratitude for the new complex, not only to the donors, but to “the faithful football players” who believed the Jayhawks could compete with Big 12 heavyweights, signed on to play against them, and will be gone by the time the new complex is completed – scheduled for 2008 – and put to use by the team.

It will be called the Anderson Family Football Complex and the Memorial Stadium field will be named Kivisto Field during halftime of today’s Homecoming game against Texas A&M. Anderson and Kivisto spoke to how the complex will benefit more than football.

“When I went to grad school here, the university hired me for three or four jobs,” Kivisto said. “I had a position at the Williams Fund and I was also the men’s and women’s tennis coach, so I sat at Allen Fieldhouse as a non-revenue sports coach and shared office space with three other sports programs. That makes it very difficult to recruit a player to your office when you’re sharing an office with three other coaches. What this does today is about excellence for KU football in the future and for all of KU athletics, all the non-revenue sports up there at Allen Fieldhouse, allows them a stronger base to recruit from, more facilities to train and prepare for when they go compete and KU brings its blue and crimson colors around the country.”

Who cares about non-revenue sports? The NCAA, for one.

“We’ve been written up by the NCAA that we don’t have sufficient offices for the women and the Olympic sports,” Anderson said. “This is going to solve that problem. That’s the really neat thing. And we’re going to have more of these 50,000-attendance football games, and we need that economically. We’ve got to get the football program competitive to bring in the revenues to sustain the Olympic and women’s sports. We can’t load basketball anymore than it’s loaded.”

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Members of the 1948 Orange Bowl team – including Otto Schnellbacher, Cliff McDonald and Don Fambrough – are planning to be in attendance at today’s game and will be recognized at the end of the third quarter.

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The first KU quarterback to beat Texas A&M is also the only KU quarterback to beat Texas A&M. The Aggies have a six-game winning streak in the seven-game series. Scott McMichael, director of community development for Bert Nash, was a sophomore and had such a good game he was named Sports Illustrated’s “Back of the Week” for his performance in KU’s 28-10 victory over the Aggies during the 1974 season. McMichael’s 61-yard touchdown pass to Emmett Edwards rallied KU from a 10-7 deficit.

“They came into the week ranked second or third in the country and had Lester Hayes,” remembered McMichael, who completed 12 of 14 passes for 178 yards. “We ended up playing a helluva game and beat them.”

Hayes would become a perennial All-Pro cornerback for the Oakland Raiders and became known for his use of Stick ‘Em on his hands.

“I stayed away from Mr. Stick ‘Em,” McMichael said when asked if he was intercepted by him. “I didn’t want the ball coming back with all that gunk on it.”