@Kip_McSmithers
In all fairness, Lew also more than doubled the budget of the Athletic Department and all the basketball and football facility upgrades including the new basketball and football practice complexes as well as AFH were done during his tenure. More importantly, without Lew, KU does not go to the Orange Bowl.
Yes, there were issues during his tenure but there were also big positives that many forgot all too quickly.
For those of you that do not remember the Orange Bowl controversy, here is a snippet that explains it. Even when the Big 12 itself favored Oklahoma going to the Orange Bowl instead of Kansas, Lew though his connections was able to keep KU in the Orange Bowl; I don't think anyone else could have done that...
Controversy
Although Virginia Tech's selection via automatic bid was relatively quiet, Kansas' selection caused a great deal of controversy. Kansas had lost to Big 12 runner-up Missouri and had a lower Bowl Championship Poll ranking than the Tigers. Some believed that Missouri should have been selected ahead of Kansas because they had defeated Kansas and because they had played in the Big 12 Championship Game. According to BCS officials, however, Missouri's two losses were more of a detriment than Kansas's one loss and subsequent championship game absence.
Pundits and fans who opposed Kansas' selection pointed to the Jayhawks' strength of schedule, which at one point during the season was as low as 109th out of 119 Division I teams. By the time of the BCS selection, however, Kansas's strength of schedule had climbed by a small amount, reaching 88th in the Sagarin rankings and 74th in the CBS rankings. The final rankings rated Kansas' schedule as more difficult than Hawaii, which was also selected to play in the BCS Aggravating the situation was the fact that Kansas and Missouri had one of the most intense rivalries in college football. Known as the Border War, the roots of the rivalry dated to the years before the American Civil War.
Two weeks after the selection of Kansas, yet another controversy arose when it was revealed that Big 12 and ACC officials had worked out an agreement to feature an Oklahoma/Virginia Tech matchup in the Orange Bowl in the hours leading up to the final selection. Oklahoma, which initiated the proposal, requested that it face the highest-ranked BCS opponent then available, which would have been Virginia Tech (ranked 3rd in the BCS). Normally, Oklahoma, the 2007 Big 12 Champion, would have played in the Fiesta Bowl, which holds the automatic rights to the Big 12 Champion's BCS bid. A little-known clause in the Bowl Championship Series contract, however, allows for the commissioners of the BCS to override that bid if the automatically selected team had played in the game the previous year, or to create a more interesting matchup. Oklahoma had played in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and seemed a perfect candidate for execution of the clause. Representatives from the Orange and Fiesta bowls reportedly worked out a deal to swap Oklahoma and Kansas and Dan Beebe, the commissioner from the Big 12, presented the plan to the BCS committee. The remaining BCS commissioners rejected the request (with only the Big 12, ACC and Big East commissioners in favor) and honored the original selection of Kansas for the Orange Bowl and forced Oklahoma to accept its automatic Fiesta Bowl Bid.[27] The release of this plan upset many fans at both schools and across the country, who perceived that an (4)Oklahoma-(3)Virginia Tech matchup would have been superior to a (8)Kansas-(3)Virginia Tech game. Ironically, while Oklahoma-Virginia Tech was perceived as a better match-up due to their high rankings, both teams went on to be upset by the lower ranked team with Oklahoma losing 48-28 to (9)West Virginia.
