One of the more enjoyable stories of the 2007 season was the enormous rise of Kansas football, thanks in no small part to enormous coach Mark Mangino. And as the wins kept coming in Lawrence, shirts celebrating the grand girth of the KU coach kept selling. You’ve probably seen or at least heard of the some of the fat-focused fashions, such as “Our Coach Beat Anorexia” or “Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach“.

Sure, such shirt slogans may be all in good fun, but as Jeff Flanagan of the KANSAS CITY STAR discovers, some Jayhawks aren’t enjoying the fat jokes.

KU linebacker Mike Rivera is one player who doesn’t fully appreciate fans poking fun at his porky coach:

“I guess everyone has a different sense of humor. Some things are funny to some people. But sometime you have to think about what other people feel.“

Well, Mangino has about 2.3 million reasons to feel pretty good at the moment. That can certainly buy a lot of Honeybaked hams.

If anything, the phat fat apparel should make Mangino proud of pulling off the impossible - getting folks interested in Kansas football again. And such shirts just help cement Mark’s celebrity status among the Jayhawk faithful.

We just wonder when Mangino’s gonna start demanding his cut from sales of such shirts. Depends on if the KU coach hires the same lawyers the school’s administration did.