The Kansas Jayhawks slap hands with fans as they leave the court following practice at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, March 17, 2010.

Oklahoma City ? President Obama may be picking Kansas to beat Kansas State two weeks from now in the Final Four, but the in-state rivalry already is heating up in the stands, on the streets and in the bars of Oklahoma City.

The two teams can’t play here on the court, of course — KU is No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional, while K-State is No. 2 in the West — but with both teams playing first-round games Thursday at Ford Center, the competitive buzz already is boiling between purple passion and those true to the crimson and blue.

“I don’t expect them to root for us,” said Jake Tyler, a Kansas University senior from Lawrence, sitting a couple rows behind KU assistants Joe Dooley, Kurtis Townsend and Danny Manning as they scouted UNLV’s public practice at Ford Center. “We’ve already beat them the three times. I don’t think they’d mind us being out of it.”

Good luck, he says.

And this isn’t simply a matter of scoring prowess, or team talent, or even those Jayhawk-dominated regular-season results.

Try money. Real money.

“Great people,” said Geoff Bond, who enjoyed serving drinks to legions of KU fans during KU’s 2007 Big 12 Tournament title run, when he worked and managed at Bricktown Brewery. “Good sports fans. Great tippers.

“I went to Europe two days later and I paid for 10 days in Europe off those four days. I went to Europe on the generosity of KU fans.”

Now, as general manager two doors down at TapWerks, Bond is counting on K-Staters upstaging their in-state rivals. His bar is playing host to K-State events, and has 30 kegs of Manhattan’s own Tallgrass beer in stock and another 25 cases of the brew in back.

Bring on the purple.

“I’m hopeful they will be very much like the KU fans,” Bond said, choosing his words carefully. “That would be an incredible boost to the local economy.”

Tim Allen, senior associate director of the Big 12 Conference and tournament director for the NCAA event in Oklahoma City, is still looking forward to fans from both sides of the Sunflower Showdown to step up this week. The 18,500-seat Ford Center entered Wednesday with plenty of seats still available.

“And by ‘plenty’ I mean thousands,” Allen said, courtside as 74 fans watched Florida’s public practice Wednesday morning. “But nobody’s mad. Nobody’s angry or sitting around upset.”

Instead, officials anticipate robust sales Thursday, as Kansas and K-State fans snap up single-session tickets for as little as $70.25 at the arena’s ticket office.

“We hope we’ll have really strong walk-up,” he said.

Brett Payne, a Salina native who earned an engineering degree from K-State and now lives in Oklahoma City, expects Wildcat fans to “represent” in a big way this week. Just as the Powercat became a symbol of college football power in the 1990s, he foresees Frank Martin’s squad building upon its No. 2 seeding in the seasons ahead.

Fans stand ready. Enthusiasm builds.

Now, if only KU hadn’t already defeated the Wildcats those three times earlier this season.

“We actually have to beat KU once to really do it,” Payne said, his head bowing only slightly. “But we’ll get there.”

Not if Obama has anything to say about it.