The Newly Added Expectations for the Kansas Basketball Team

It's not as if expectations for the Kansas Men's Basketball team aren't already astronomical—the season's preseason No. 1 rank automatically means everyone doesn't just think that you could win it all, but that you should win it all.

A preseason No. 1 rank, a star-studded recruiting class led by future lottery pick Xavier Henry, in other words the personnel to do, well, the expected. So what other expectations could be piled on the consensus favorite to cut down the nets in early April?

The answer would be the team that competes on the other side of the hill that the University of Kansas sits on.

The Kansas football team lost to Nebraska 34-17 on Saturday. They have now lost five straight games and have Texas and Missouri left on the schedule.

The football team had began their season with high expectations. Many picked them to win the Big XII North division, possibly winning 10 games along the way. Now a 5-7 record looks all but inevitable.

The anxiety that the football team has given Kansas fans has now culminated, and the relief that basketball season has officially begun has sunk in.

However, it wouldn't be wise to say that many of those fans won't be heaping their anxiety from the failed football campaign directly on the shoulders of Bill Self and his team.

While some KU fans may not transfer the unmet football expectations onto the basketball team directly, at the very least, football fans will be looking for the basketball team's expected success to comfort the anxiety they have felt from a failed football season.

Most fans would inevitably tell you that my hypothesis has no grounds—that expectations for the basketball team are always high, and that a poor season in football never produces any extra expectations for the basketball team because the football program has been bad for so long.

However, it's my belief that had the football team met one of their popular preseason expectations, the football team's success would have taken some of the sting out of a hypothetical pre-Championship game exit for the basketball team in March.

Sure, the mere thought of anything but another National Championship for the basketball team this year may reduce even the brawniest Jayhawk fan to tears. 

But with the failure of this year's football team to even come close to reaching preseason expectations, there will surely be plenty of die-hard football fans piling their football anxiety to the basketball team, in some form or another.