Every Kansas fan has his own story about what last year’s NCAA Championship meant to him. And they’re all eager to share it.

Even Chad Ford. Yeah, the guy who covers the NBA and the NBA Draft for ESPN.com and occasionally shares an opinion or two on SportsCenter — he’s a Kansas fan.

Ford never attended the University — he earned degrees from George Mason and Georgetown — but grew up in Kansas City and loved Jayhawk basketball. He never stopped following the crimson and blue.

Ford, who is also a law professor at Brigham Young University Hawaii, was on campus two weeks ago to give a lecture titled “When Parties Bring Their Jump Shots To The Table: Sports and Conflict Transformation.” Of course, he also talked a little bit about last year’s Jayhawks.

Ford said he was such a loyal Kansas fan that every year come tournament time, he’d pick the Jayhawks to march through the tournament and win it all in his bracket. Seriously, every year.

As you can imagine, this didn’t spawn positive results for a 20-year stretch. The Jayhawks always let Ford down. His bracket usually wasn’t one of the more accurate ones among his ESPN colleagues.

“Around the ESPN offices, people would say, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be an expert?’” Ford said during the lecture. “‘How are the secretaries beating you?’”

So finally last season Kansas went to San Antonio for the Final Four, won it all and made Ford look like the genius he is supposed to be. Right, Chad?

“This year, I saw how well UCLA was playing and …” Ford said.

He picked the Bruins to win. For the first time, Ford picked against the Jayhawks. Bad call. As you know, Kansas erased a nine-point deficit in just more than two minutes in the national championship game, Sherron Collins made an incredible steal and a three-pointer and Mario Chalmers hit The Shot.

Don’t think Ford’s failure to pick Kansas as the eventual national champion tempered his enthusiasm. After all, this guy is a fan.

“My family saw a new side of me when Mario Chalmers hit the shot,” Ford said. “I used a vertical jump I haven’t had since high school and injured my coffee table.”

— — Edited by Kelsey Hayes