Lincoln is a capital city and it's bigger than Manhattan, so they've got that going for them.
I can opine on this subject a bit more objectively than some others, being that I moved to Kansas from Texas in the middle of my senior year and I got to experience the KSU and ku campuses as a out of state student. I grew up 30 minutes north of Austin and attended many school functions at Baylor, UT, SWT-San Marcos, U of Houston and visited the A&M campus once with my dad. The UT campus I was most familiar with as I had a yearbook seminar there in 7th grade, went to many Austin Symphony fieldtrips (Bass Concert Hall), many visits to the LBJ library on campus and got to go all over Austin with my dad. I loved it and always planned on going there. The Baylor campus I was also familiar with as we had some field trips there too, and Houston and A&M.
So when I moved to Kansas I got to visit Lawrence and Manhattan as I was 'school shopping'. Neither of them jumped out at me as bad or good compared to everything else I had seen. I was practical enough to know going out of state to UT in Austin was not a great idea when I could just go to ku or KSU. I decided on KSU as it was closer to my parents and I enjoyed myself at my first football game there (35-0 home shutout of Minnesota in '94). So yes, Dr. Wefald is right, sports are a window on a university. Especially when we're talking state schools where when you are on the undecided degree, you can pretty much flip a coin.
But that's just me. If I were on a basketball scholarship who knows.