¢ Bill Self gets a mention in a USA Today story about some of the unusual provisions included in NCAA coaching contracts._Kansas’ Bill Self gets 10 tickets per home game and can request up to 40 more, plus six tickets per road game, 10 tickets to Big 12 tournament games and 10 to NCAA tournament games. He also has use of football suite.__Kansas also covers “reasonable travel expenses” for Self’s wife and children for games outside of Lawrence, Kan._Also, it mentions:_Kansas provides Bill Self with a $1.125 million “retention payment” that isn’t vested until the end of March 2011 – unless KU athletics director Lew Perkins leaves. If Perkins goes, Self is immediately entitled to $225,000 for each season he has coached the Jayhawks at that point and “each payment thereafter through the end of this agreement will vest on the anniversary date.” He doesn’t actually collect the money until the end of March 2011 or when he leaves the school, if it’s before that._And…_Kansas’ Bill Self: $50,000 for a regular-season Big 12 championship and $25,000 for a conference tournament title._Other Big 12 mentions:- _Oklahoma’s Jeff Capel must “ensure that his actions and statements both publicly and internally will reflect favorably” on the school and its athletics department and programs. And he must “use best efforts to ensure” that his assistants and players do the same._- _Texas A&M’s Billy Gillispie cannot “publicly endorse any political candidate, issue or referendum, whether on the national, state or local level.”_- _Texas A&M’s Billy Gillispie gets a $77,000 housing allowance._¢ K-State fans’ throwing of chickens onto their home court during the KU-KSU basketball game last month continues to get media mentions. The latest is in the Daily Illini, the student newspaper of the University of Illinois, where a student columnist explains how she can love animals and eat meat, too._ On Feb. 19. at a Kansas State basketball game, ardent fans of the Kansas State Wildcats threw live chickens on the basketball court to taunt their University of Kansas opponents, whose mascot is the Jayhawk. Shortly after the game, everyone’s favorite animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, issued a statement calling for the banning of the practice. PETA cited that chickens are “very intelligent and inquisitive animals” that were, at Kansas State, exposed to “deafening noise, bright lights, terror, abusive handling and likely death for the sake of amusement.”__For once, I kind of agree with PETA. We shouldn’t throw live chickens onto basketball courts and then senselessly kill them afterwards. The problem, though, is that animal rights activists (animal rights positions in general) go beyond just saying that we should not use animals senselessly; they assert that we should not use animals at all. I’d like to explain, as clearly as I can, why it is that I support the banning of the Kansas State chicken toss, but still eat meat, support animal testing and own pets._¢ Band Mates of State, comprised of a couple who met at KU, is profiled in today’s Dallas Observer._Keyboardist-singer Kori Gardner and drummer-singer Jason Hammel met in 1997 while both were students at the University of Kansas, and after relocating to San Francisco, they exchanged wedding vows in 2001. On March 21, the band issues Bring It Back, their fourth and finest album of meticulously crafted New Wave bliss. According to Hammel, the making of the album represented a breakthrough in the couple’s working relationship.__”We’ve finally figured out how to criticize each other tactfully,” Hammel says by phone, on the eve of the duo’s national tour. “On our first couple of records, we had fairly significant arguments, but it never really carried into our [personal] relationship. On this album, I think it was the first time we didn’t have any serious fights. We’ve found common ground and learned to accept each other’s individual visions.”_