Here’s your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• I took a peek through new athletic director Sheahon Zenger’s contract and compared it side-by-side with Lew Perkins’ contract. Aside from the obvious new clauses about plane usage, exercise equipment and ethics mentioned Monday, here are some other random things I noticed:

— There’s a lot more specificity in Zenger’s contract, just generally. Reading the two contracts side-by-side, it’s even clearer that KU tightened the screws on more than a few things. For example…

From Perkins’ contract:

“The University will pay reasonable expenses for a house-hunting trip for Perkins and his spouse and will further provide reasonable moving expenses by which Perkins may move his household goods to Kansas.”

From Zenger’s contract:

“The University will pay reasonable expenses for a house-hunting trip for Athletics Director and his spouse and will further pay reasonable moving expenses by which Athletics Director may move his household goods to Lawrence, Kansas, such expenses together to not exceed $30,000. Moving company shall be selected from list provided by University.”

And here’s just one more example, pertaining to travel costs for the athletic director’s spouse.

Perkins:

“KUAC shall pay reasonable expenses for Gwen Perkins to attend a reasonable number of away football and men’s basketball games when an official business purpose is not identified.”

Zenger:

“KAI shall pay reasonable travel expenses for Athletics Director’s spouse to attend four off campus football games and four off campus men’s basketball games.”

There are lots of other examples of this throughout the contract.

Make no mistake, KU’s legal eagles really spent a lot of time going line-by-line through this thing to make sure it was as tight as possible.

— Gone is the $100,000 annual “media relations” fee that Perkins received as part of his contract. It always particularly confused me that Perkins received $100,000 for media relations in that, well, I’m media, and he never did much relating to me. And it’s not just me, either. I heard many grumblings from media folks who covered him much more than I ever did about how Perkins was very inaccessible.

— Perkins got a few extra “goodies” that are also gone this time around. For instance, Perkins was given a $24,000 payment to use (at his option) to pay his home mortgage in Connecticut, to use as a down payment on a Lawrence house or to pay a real estate commission in connection with the sale of his personal residence in Connecticut.

No idea why that was included. At least it’s gone now.

Also missing in Zenger’s contract are those hefty, tax-free retention bonuses that Perkins earned simply for staying on the job for a specified period of time. Though Perkins’ salary was about $900,000 annually (including the “media relations” portion of his contract), those hefty bonuses earned him a lot of national attention when his salary ballooned to more than $4 million in 2009.

I’m including Perkins’ initial contract (I should note that it was amended several times later by Chancellor Robert Hemenway, raising Perkins’ salary significantly and adding retention payments) and Zenger’s contract here for easy access. Let me know if you spot anything else that’s odd.

• Though it’s not an officially sanctioned KU varsity team, you can catch KU’s club hockey team in action in Independence, Mo., in the Border Showdown against Missouri at 7:05 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 20, at the Independence Events Center, 19100 East Valley View Parkway. (Apparently even club teams can’t call it the “Border War”…)

I’ve watched a few of these Border Showdowns before in person, and I have to say, it’s a pretty fun time in a pretty cool venue, if you’re into hockey at all. The Independence Events Center is still new, just celebrating its first-year anniversary. It’s a great, small place to take in an event like that.

• Since we’re talking today so much about sports anyway, in looking over a list of sports figures who died in 2010 I spotted three (that I can see, anyway) with Lawrence and KU connections.

Of course, last year, we lost KU track star Wes Santee and Lawrence native and former Yankees manager Ralph Houk.

But also, 2010 saw the passing of William T. Foster, a KU graduate who founded the Florida A&M Marching 100, which would eventually be declared by Sports Illustrated as the best marching band in the country.

• I’m always looking for tips for Heard on the Hill. You can catch up with me drawing up my new contract complete with $100,000 media relations supplements at ahyland@ljworld.com. Now to get my employer to sign it. …