Wear a helmet! Wear a helmet!

Every day we hear pleas from people eager to protect individuals in contact activities from suffering head injuries, whether it’s skateboarding, bicycling, football, hockey, almost any sport – or some youngster with equilibrium problems who should wear headgear because he falls a lot and hits his head. Concussions are, and should be, a constant fear for parents.

There is increasing evidence kids using those “heelies,” wheels in sneakers, need a lot more protective gear.

It drives me nuts to watch young soccer players absorbing those horrible shots to the cranium as they execute headers. You ever been hit in the face with a sharply propelled soccer ball?

The NFL put the issue on the table this week with a meeting of doctors and trainers from every club to focus on the ugly business of concussions. There has been increasing incidence of “football dementia,” a version of boxing punch drunkenness, the kind of thing that has devastated the magnificent Muhammad Ali. How many collisions before you’re addled?

Improvements in helmeting are crucial to all the fields of contact I’ve mentioned and more, but there’s one gigantic fact too often overlooked: Helmets can prevent skull fractures; there’s no fail-safe instrument to prevent concussions.

The individual, jock or not, gets a blow to the head, the brain accelerates in the cranial vault, then damage occurs when the brain strikes the skull. That skull may escape fracture, but that brain keeps sloshing around in your head and can take bruisings which, over time, can cause big trouble.

There’s no foolproof hat for sports like soccer, hockey and such because the juices flow inside the head and can’t be protected by any shell. Most at risk are young kids who can get gonged a number of times and pay penalties the rest of their lives. There’s no protection for inside the skull.

l This is a pivotal year for Kansas University football and women’s basketball to justify the kind of money being spent in the so-called pursuit of excellence.

Football coach Mark Mangino has four years left on a $1.5-million annual salary arrangement. There are high hopes he and his Jayhawks can pull off an 8-4 season and snare a notable bowl trip. Would 7-5 and a marginal bowl be enough to satisfy athletic director Lew Perkins? Probably.

But suppose there’s a 6-6 and another bowl snub. Would Perkins start thinking in terms of East Carolina’s Skip Holtz, son of friend Lou Holtz? How binding is the five-year gig inaugurated just before last season?

When court coach Bonnie Henrickson was nabbed from Virginia Tech, KU had to pay Tech $523,000 to buy out her contract, gave her about a $525,000 salary package (it’s now $635,000), provided salaries of $90,000 and up for several assistants and spent lots of money on new offices and facilities. By the time Marian Washington’s going-away portfolio was settled, KU probably had put out $1.5 million just to get going.

Bonnie was 158-62 in seven seasons at Va. Tech and had five NCAA and two WNIT appearances. She’s 40-49 after three seasons at KU and has had one winning year, 17-13 in 2005-06. Home attendance needs to push into the 6,000-7,000 range for the program just to break even.

So while fans may have high hopes for KU football this fall, it’s going to take a dramatic turnaround for women’s basketball to start justifying the big money being thrown at it.