You know what today is, don’t you? OK, it’s the first day of the rest of your life. But it’s also a new year for Kansas Athletics Inc.

KAI, the corporate behemoth that operates on the Kansas University campus, functions on a fiscal year basis that begins on July 1.

The arrival of New Fiscal Year’s Day means that just about all the KAI employees will be receiving their hefty raises based on the bountiful booty created by the football team’s appearance in the Orange Bowl and the men’s basketball team’s : well, you know what it did.

July 1 has an additional connotation. It means last year is last year. In other words, it’s officially time to forget about 2007-2008 and slip into the inevitable next-year mode.

Fortunately, for football coach Mark Mangino and for men’s basketball coach Bill Self, expectations will be diminished – football because of an upgraded schedule and men’s basketball because of a major roster overhaul.

Dropoffs are likely. Fans have to realize that. Not that anyone expects Mangino or Self to hide behind excuses. Decline may be inevitable, but the fans won’t tolerate a freefall.

KU football, for example, has about as much chance of matching last year’s magical 12-1 season as Lawrence does of becoming a major seaport. Those two blissful years with Texas and Oklahoma missing from the Jayhawks’ schedule are history.

Eight wins would be a more reasonable expectation this fall, and, to tell the truth, seven victories might be more logical.

Basically, though, the Jayhawks have to find a way to snap the school’s ongoing post-bowl jinx. Kansas has never made back-to-back appearances in the postseason. That’s right. Never.

How pervasive has that whammy been? Let’s use 2006 as an example. Only one school in the country with a bowl-qualifying record failed to receive a bid that year, and I don’t have to tell you which school it was.

Sure, the Jayhawks’ 6-6 record wasn’t all that great, but it was good enough, or should have been good enough. On the flip side, you could speculate the ’06 snub may have given the Jayhawks added incentive during their amazing 2007 Orange Bowl season.

Don’t discount a team’s mental approach. All you have to do is hearken back to 1969, the last time a KU football team was coming off an Orange Bowl appearance. Heavy graduation losses hurt, but that ’69 team might have been the most complacent in school history while stumbling to a 1-9 record – one of the most dramatic win-loss reversals in NCAA annals.

The 1982 season – the year after the Jayhawks played in the ’81 defunct Hall of Fame Bowl in that storied southern spa of Birmingham, Ala. – was almost as bad. The ’82 team went 2-7-1.

Overall, KU’s record in post-bowl years is 45-61-3, with three winning seasons, six losing seasons and that one .500 year of ’06. Those three winning seasons – 1976 (6-5), 1962 (6-3-1) and 1948 (7-3) – certainly would have produced post-season appearances if the bowl count were as high in those days as it is now.

But they didn’t, leaving us to wonder if 2008 will be the year the Kansas post-bowl curse finally ends.