According to Jerry Palm of CBSsports.com, the 2013 season will be another rough one for the Kansas University football team.

It’s not that Palm projected the Jayhawks to win just one or two games — he may, but that’s not what’s in the news today — but rather that Palm projected that 9 of the 12 teams on KU’s schedule for the upcoming season will qualify for bowl games when everything is said and done.

That projection includes two of the three non-conference opponents KU will face this season, as Palm has Rice (Sept. 14) slated to play in the Hawaii Bowl and Louisiana Tech (Sept. 21) slotted into the New Orleans Bowl.

The only members of KU’s schedule not picked by Palm for the postseason are South Dakota (Sept. 7), Texas Tech (Oct. 5) and West Virginia (Nov. 16).

Both Tech and WVU made bowl appearances in 2012, when 11 of the 12 teams KU faced wound up in bowl games.

Such is life in the Big 12 Conference, where powerhouse programs like Texas, Oklahoma and, lately, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Baylor, pop up on the schedule week in and week out. There are no down weeks in conference play, particularly for a team like KU, which is still in the middle of a rebuilding project, and that fact makes the road to respectability even tougher to travel for KU coach Charlie Weis and company.

I guess, in a way, the 2013 schedule might actually set up better for KU than last year’s slate. Time will tell. But the good news — if you’re looking for it — is that KU will face two of Palm’s three projected non-bowl opponents during the first four games of the season.

It’s been said before, and even proven to be true around here, but getting off to a good start drastically can change the way a season unfolds.

The fun begins in less than four months.