I don't think officials intentionally favor KU, UNC, Duke, Kentucky, or any other team. It is plausible that they unconsciously favor those teams, but I think the star power effect is overrated if it exists at all. Sometimes officials just make terrible calls. Remember the 1985 World Series? The Cardinals got screwed, but the Royals didn't get that call because of star power. However, if the Yankees had gotten such a call, I imagine some people would have argued it was because they are the Yankees.
Clearly, Johnson charged on that play last year. But we don't see the play from the eyes of the officials; we see it from the eyes of the camera. It looked to me like neither of the refs had a good, unobstructed view of the play, and each of them were relying on the other to make the call... thus no whistle. But this doesn't excuse it because they should have been in position to see the play clearly and make the right call.
I don't think that the KU fanbase is any different than the ISU fan base. Every fan base has whiners. But I don't think that the entire KU fan base agreed with Mangino that the officials purposefully favored Texas, nor do I think that the entire ISU fan base thinks that the officials purposefully favored KU last year.