KU grad finally makes it after missing out in 1969

? Just $50.

That’s how much Mark Robinett needed to scrape together for an entire trip to the Orange Bowl in 1969. That amount of money wouldn’t cover the cost of a student ticket to tonight’s Kansas University-Virginia Tech football game.

Back in 1969, Robinett assumed the Jayhawks would return soon to the Orange Bowl – and by then, he’d be able to swing the cost.

Finally, 39 years later, Robinett, a KU graduate who now lives in Austin, Texas, is at the Orange Bowl, accompanied by his wife, Carolyn, and sons, Kellis and Travis.

“Their inheritance suffered a bit this weekend,” Mark Robinett said. “If I’d known how long it would be for us to return to the Orange Bowl, I probably would have found a way to scrape together the money to go.”

Robinett said when he looked at that season, he thought KU had the nucleus for longtime success. Pepper Rodgers was returning as KU’s coach, John Riggins was slated to return and, despite graduating the majority of their starters, the Jayhawks, he thought, would surely be good.

The team went 1-9 the season after the 1969 Orange Bowl.

“That team had to be the best 1-9 football team in history,” Robinett said.

Carolyn Robinett – herself a KU student in 1969 – said being in Miami for activities leading up to tonight’s game has been great fun. She had the opportunity to go to Miami the last time with the Jayhawks, but she gave her ticket to a friend.

“It’s pretty exciting just seeing so many KU people down here,” she said. “We were sitting out for lunch on Ocean Drive, and it was fun to see Kansas people coming by.”

She added that the excitement of the Jayhawks’ 11-1 season hooked her family long before this year’s Orange Bowl. While they’d been to about one game a year recently with both sons this year Mark and Carolyn attended four games – three in Lawrence.

“They’ve just done better than expected,” she said. “I’m not as big a sports fan as Kellis and Mark and Travis are, but every week they’d get the win and there’d be so many positive things you could say about them.”

Mark Robinett said he has every reason to believe the Jayhawks won’t repeat the 1-9 season that followed the team’s last Orange Bowl appearance.

“We have a really good, young quarterback, who we’re not graduating,” he said. “We have a coach who’s committed to this program.”

And, of course, he’s pulling for a different outcome in the game itself. The Jayhawks, he remembers, lost in 1969 to Penn State.

“Bowl games are a crap shoot,” he said. “If we go out and have fun, we’ll have a good time.”