The scheduling goal, Kansas University associate athletic director Larry Keating said, is to play one 1-AA game a year, one “buy” game and two games as part of a home-and-home series, one at home, one on the road each year.

It didn’t work out that way this year, and Kansas scheduled all four nonconference games at home, against Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp.

Neither Keating nor football coach Mark Mangino is complaining about that, and neither are the vast majority of fans, Keating said.

“Fans like to see winning teams before they like to see good opponents,” he said. “The other 47,522 fans are happy with the win. It’s the six people who for some reason want to play Notre Dame, Michigan and California every week who are the only ones who say anything. The other guys are pretty happy that we’re winning, and they don’t say anything. And that’s typical.”

Imagine Notre Dame visiting Memorial Stadium.

“I have been trying to play Notre Dame since I got here,” Keating said. “They have given no indication they are interested in playing us.”

So why not pitch ND about doing a two-for-one, a three-year series during which Kansas gets one home game and travels twice?

“I’ve never even thought about doing that,” Keating said.

Why not?

“Because we don’t do two-for-ones unless we get two home games,” he answered.

Again, why not?

“Because we’re a BCS school,” he said.

BCS schools don’t do that. Too bad, because the players would love making two trips to Golden Dome country, and the students would love watching Kansas try to beat Notre Dame, which isn’t usually as easy as that sounds now.

A home-and-home for 2009 and 2010 already has been scheduled with Duke. Beating the Blue Devils in any sport juices a crowd.

Army and Navy, because of all the servicemen who would be in the crowd, also would be extremely appealing opponents. It also would be a great educational experience for Kansas athletes to visit the service academies.

“When I got here, Army and Navy were within the first five calls I made about scheduling,” Keating said. “Army has indicated some interest, but has constantly pushed back its availability. They’re scheduled out to probably six or seven years. Navy, I just recently talked to, and they said they would consider it and will get back to us with dates. It’s tough, though. We’re not the only geniuses here. Everybody wants to play them.”

The key to the nonconference schedule lies in the home-and-home series. The buy game, which means KU pays a school to play in Lawrence, is pretty much an automatic victory, as is the 1-AA game.

For the other two games, winning and glamour enter the equation.

“I think you want to be more protective about winning the nonconference games than you do about attraction,” Keating said. “There is something to that (an attractive opponent), and we are trying to upgrade a little. I use as a criteria TV-acceptable games. We need to get on TV.”

For example, South Florida, on the road schedule next year, is TV-worthy. So is Duke. Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp? Only as reruns.