Mark your calendars for Spring Scrimmage on April 16 and the upcoming football season, KU's 116th.  Only 11 NCAA schools have played football longer.  This fall's schedule is:

--Everybody knows KU beat K-State in the first game played in AFH. But did you know K-State was favored, and that was the ONLY home victory for the Hawks that year?

--Phog Allen did not coach that first game, letting assistant Dick Harp take over so as not to put undue pressure on his players on that night of special importance to him.

--KU also won in Manhattan that year (an early version of the "Streak") at the dedicatory game of Ahearn Fieldhouse!

--Phog Allen first voiced his dream of playing in a huge fieldhouse in 1927!  The legislature took a while to find funding.  The Depression also didn't help much.

--AFH cost $2.6 million to build.

--AFH's interior was originally painted drab green because it was also supposed to be used as an armory.

--Before AFH was built, KU team members dressed in Old Robinson's locker rooms and walked next door in the winter weather to play in Hoch Auditorium.

--A mild controversy arose over naming the fieldhouse since it was not tradition to name buildings after living people.  Those who wanted the building named for Naismith were calmed somewhat by renaming Michigan Street to Naismith Drive.  Others wanted Naismith-Allen to grace the building, but the very much alive Phog was honored and humbled when it was named solely for him.  The UDK ran a student poll in which over 1000 students voted. 914 supported naming the building for Allen--a landslide in anybody's book.

--When built, AFH was second in size only to Minnesota's arena.

--At the end of the AFH dedication ceremony, the KU Alumni Association presented Allen with keys to a brand new Cadillac.

--During the halftime dedication ceremony, 103 former players lined the court, including one from KU's first basketball team in 1899.

--During the very first game, students discovered that stomping made the building shake--a discovery apparently not much appreciated by the legislators present.

--Unspoken in the drive for a new building was the very real recruiting advantage it provided--an advantage which worked well only a year later with the announcement of the coming of Wilt Chamberlain.

From the KU Connection--The Men's Glee Club on tour in California in January attended a taping of "The Price Is Right" in which Bob Barker invited them to come on down at the end of the show to do an impromptu version of "I'm A Jayhawk."

Also from the KU Connection--TJC member Frank Sabatini and family have contributed $1 million to KU to complete the Multicultural Resource Center.

KU is one of five schools to win the Sen. Paul Simon award for Campus Internationalization.  Among the statistics which won the award is the amazing 20% of KU graduating seniors who study abroad as part of their curriculum, choosing from among 100 exchange programs with over 50 countries.  That percentage of students learning abroad ranks fourth nationally.

On a related note from the KU Alumni magazine, KU ranks 23 in the country among large colleges and universities in alumni serving in the Peace Corps with 47 serving in 24 countries. 

From This Day in History in the KU Connection--70 years ago the campus was shrouded in darkness by 2pm when a dust storm struck Lawrence.

Find 1993 KU grad Rob Riggle as the only new cast member of Saturday Night Live.

For unique KU jewelry, check out The Etc. Shop, 928 Mass in Lawrence.

KU football's expanding the popular Family Zone sections in the stadium.