<table> </table> LAWRENCE | Mark Mangino couldn&#8217;t believe it.</p><p>He had been glad-handing Kansas football fans for the last hour, welcoming them into his new home, the Anderson Family Football Complex, doing things he wouldn&#8217;t have been asked to do six years ago. Looking like he could use a good position meeting &#8212; pronto! &#8212; Mangino was approached by several KU athletic department officials. They were smiling. Big.</p><p>&#8220;The line is all the way down to 11th Street,&#8221; one official said.</p><p>&#8220;Is it <em>really</em>?&#8221; Mangino asked.</p><p>He shook his head and let out a little smile of his own. Mangino has won nearly every national coach of the year award, he has won an Orange Bowl, his team is ranked No. 14 to start this season, and it seemed that he hadn&#8217;t really understood how far his program had risen until he saw his own fan base waiting for hours in 90-degree heat just to get a rare look inside his world.</p><p>Back in 2002, Mangino could spend all of his time holed up in the film room, which, of course, is exactly where he wanted to be. Public appearances? They were on six Saturdays in the fall, and they were usually sparsely attended anyway. He could focus on winning small victories, taking baby steps, laying a foundation. Spending a Wednesday night kissing the right butts to make sure they remained in the seats was not in the job description.</p><p>Yet, here he was in late July, just days before fall camp was to begin, trying to be the jovial face of the program. A boy in a No. 10 Kansas jersey ran by him in the hallway.</p><p>&#8220;He looks kind of like Kerry Meier!&#8221; Mangino quipped.</p><p>Eight to 10 thousand people would show up that night. They drove from Pittsburg, from Andover, from towns way west of Salina, all with varying levels of expectation for this Kansas program with the $31 million facelift.</p><p>For every season in memory, success at KU was defined by a bowl invitation. <em>Any</em> bowl invitation. Now, after the most successful season in school history, would that change? Would an invite to the Texas Bowl suffice just one year removed from winning the Orange Bowl? Would an average of 7-5 over the next five years be enough? Or had Mangino created a monster by soaring so high last season?</p><p>Season-ticket holder Jim Jackson, a 1974 KU alum, stood in the lobby and studied a monument to KU&#8217;s 11-game bowl history. He noticed a trend: Fourteen seasons between bowl games. Then seven. Then five. Two. Six. Eleven. Three. Eight. Two. Two. Jackson didn&#8217;t have to think hard about his revised expectations.</p><p>&#8220;Not so many gaps,&#8221; he said.</p><p>&#8226; &#8226; &#8226;</p><p>Ask Mark Mangino what Kansas expects of itself post-2007, and you get answers like this:</p><p>&#8220;We can be as good as we want to be here.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;This program will be as good as the people associated with it. And we like to think that we&#8217;ve got great kids.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to think that we&#8217;re going to be a program that is going to continue to be a very respectable program.&#8221;</p><p>Mangino isn&#8217;t alone in responding in code. Coaches prefer to have their expectations set in the back room. It&#8217;s for protection, from message board-roaming fans who have become the ultimate jurors, ruling on success and failure depending on each individual set of circumstances. Mangino will be dealing with more and more of those fans now.</p><p>Take John and Brad Hope, a father and son who filled their tank at $4 a gallon and drove from Andover to see the new complex. John&#8217;s father started taking him to KU games in 1963 when he was a sixth-grader. John then started taking Brad in 1985, when Brad was just a baby.