Rock chalk ... What?

As a service to his loyal readers, Bracket Boy is previewing the Final Four teams: Today, the final installment – the Kansas Jayhawks.

For years, our resident expert has peered out the back window of the secret laboratory with his powerful binoculars, scanning the trees and bushes for the one bird he has never seen.

“I see a cardinal … a pigeon … a blue jay … a robin … a hummingbird .. a dodo bird … a Larry Bird … wait a minute. Hey, Larry, you need to call me before you just drop by, I’m a very busy man!”

But never, in all his bird watching, has seen a Jayhawk. Finally, he had to travel to Lawrence, Kansas, in search of one. Soon are his arrival, he discovered the startling truth about the mascot.

“They made the whole thing up!”

So remember this as you cheer for the No. 1 seed in the Midwest, a deep and talented team that head coach Bill Self has finally blended into a Final Four team. That red-and-blue bird with the yellow beak on the sidelines? Don’t go looking for it on your next hiking trip.

The Jayhawk is a mythical bird, a combination of a Jay and a Hawk and first associated in 1858 in Kansas with “robbing, looting and general lawlessness.” A few years later, a colonel decided this was a good name to use for his cavalry regiment, and then in 1886, it became part of the official Jayhawk cheer.

(More on the cheer in a minute)

“Why not combine a llama and a crocodile? Call it a llamadile!” Bracket Boy said as he read up on the Jayhawk at Phog Allen Field House. “Or an elephant and a giraffe – an eleraffe! Or wait – you could combine a falcon, a cheetah, two orangutans … a falcheetgutangutan. Or how about this. A combination of a poodle, a peacock and a turtle – the mighty poopeatle!”

“Are you done?”

As our expert was babbling, the Jayhawk itself had wandered up behind him in the field house.

“Yeah, I guess.”

But BB had more questions. Even the famous, almost eerie Kansas chat, is strange. The original cheer was “Rah Rah, Jayhawk, K-U!” but somebody decided that “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, K-U!” sounded better because, well, it rhymes. The rock and the chalk part have nothing to do with anything.

“You guys made up everything out here,” BB told the Jayhawk.

“Wait a minute,” the faux bird replied. “What about you?”

“Come again?”

“A basketball and a boy?” the Jayhawk asked. “Why not a Net Nerd? Or a Puck Person? Or a Discus Dude. Or a …

“Now you’re just being a silly bird.”

E-mail of the Day

Several readers challenged our expert’s all-time starting five for UCLA, including Robert Feeney. “There is no way Reggie Miller can be picked ahead of either Sidney Wicks or Keith Wilkes,” Robert writes. “Those guys were so much better in college than Miller.”

Derek from Hackettstown adds: “Ever hear of Sidney Wicks? Mike Warren? First you lead me wrong in my office pool, now this. I am campaigning for Bracket Girl to take over this column next year, and you can join Isiah Thomas on the unemployment line.”

BB responds: “Wicks, Warren, Wilkes – okay, I admit it, I got to the Ms in the alphabet and stopped there! (Although say this about Reggie: He was a great player on mediocre teams.)”