LAWRENCE, Kan.—The Kansas college football apocalypse happened 28 falls ago, on Sept. 19, 1987. That infamous Saturday, Glen Mason's Kent State Golden Flashes went into Lawrence and upset the Jayhawks, 31–17. Meanwhile, an hour west on Interstate 70, a similar storyline unfolded in Manhattan: Army, visiting Kansas State, trounced the Wildcats, 41–14.
Just two weeks earlier, the College Football Power Index—an early computerized ranking system of all 104 Division I programs—had listed the Jayhawks 90th and the Wildcats 102nd. In the same cluster of teams was another Kansas institution, Wichita State—which had cut football in December 1986 due to budget shortfalls and poor attendance.