As a born and raised Columbia resident who grew up on and around Mizzou’s campus, I understood that we hated Kansas before I even fully understood the concept of college. I didn’t even know why, and honestly still didn’t up until now. Now, as a sophomore at Mizzou, I’ve been lucky enough to experience two Kansas games – a basketball game in my freshman year and a football game (the first one in 14 years, by the way) this month. Knowing that we hate Kansas enough to chant about them every game and witnessing the chaos that followed every Jayhawk fan that walked through downtown Columbia after the football game, I decided to try and actually figure out where one of the most iconic rivalries in college football actually started and where it’s going next.
The history of the border
Beyond football, there was another Kansas and Missouri rivalry (and sometimes allyship) – the Civil War. Obviously, Missouri was allowed into the country as a slave state, and Kansas was a free state. However, both the Tigers and the Jayhawks are named after union groups. “Jayhawker” was a term for militant bands associated with the anti-slavery cause, and the Fighting Tigers of Columbia were a band of rebel Union supporters who formed a 90-man militia in order to protect the town from a Confederate general who sought to raid the town due to it being a hub of pro-Union support. The man who led the Tigers militia unit, James Rollins, would later be named the “Father of the University of Missouri.”
Beyond the mascot references, Missouri and Kansas were heavily entangled during the Civil War. Various Kansas forces plundered and burned six Missouri towns in the opening year of the Civil War, and two years later, William Quantrill, a Confederate guerrilla leader, led a group of men into Lawrence, Kansas, in a retaliatory attack and massacred an estimated 150 people. Interestingly, an infamous Confederate guerrilla named “Bloody Bill” Anderson both attacked Columbia and participated in the burning of Lawrence.
Despite attempts in 2004 to change the name of the Border War to the Border Showdown for sensitivity’s sake, it never caught on. Fans on both sides and even the media kept the original name.
beyond the border
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Missouri and Kansas played each other in football for the first time in 1891, beginning the historic rivalry. It’s safe to say that the bad blood remained. One source even alleges that in early matchups, Civil War veterans from both sides would line up on their respective sidelines of the field across from each other. After 17 years of football rivalry, basketball was added to the mix, with Missouri playing Kansas for the first time in 1906.
The rivalry has led to plenty of drama from both sides, with two of my personal favorites being a former Kansas football coach declaring that he would die before crossing state lines to visit a physician in Kansas City, Missouri, and former basketball coach Norm Stewart having his players stay in Kansas City, Missouri before playing Kansas and even refusing to fuel up the team bus in Kansas, as he didn’t want to put any money into Kansas’ economy.
The rival schools can’t even agree on the official record of their football matches. While it’s agreed that Missouri football holds more wins than Kansas, the exact number is up for debate, with the center of the argument being a 1960 game. In a November game, a Kansas player named Bert Coan helped carry his team to victory. With that win, Kansas won a Big Eight title and was set to represent the Big Eight in the following Orange Bowl. However, it was later discovered that a Kansas alumni had paid for Coan to fly to see an all-star game in 1959, something that the National Collegiate Athletic Association deemed illegal recruiting before Kansas ever got to the Orange Bowl. The Missouri game was forfeited, and the conference championship went to Missouri, who went on to win the 1961 Orange Bowl. Public opinion was divided, with some claiming that the punishment was unfair because Coan wasn’t recruited on that trip, and to this day, Missouri adheres to the official conference record, while Kansas still counts the 1960 game as a win.
play mr. brightside (but when?)
When Missouri left the Big 12 conference for the SEC in 2012, no games between the two schools were scheduled for almost a decade, with the exception of one basketball exhibition played between the two in 2017 for hurricane relief. Luckily, in 2019, it was agreed that six games of basketball were to be played (starting in 2021 due to Covid postponing everything), and that four football games were to be played in 2025, 2026, 2031, and 2032. If you missed last year’s basketball game, you’ll have at least three more chances to catch it, but a rivalry game in Columbia will be harder to come by, with the next game here being in 2031 or 2032. No matter what games you get the chance to go to, remember- at least you’ll always get to chant “beat” KU.