Why I Hate Missouri -- You Should Too

[sandycove]

I’ll chime in here with my KU-MU perspective as, like suzzer, a Kansas City ex-pat, and a Kansas alum whose family have been Jayhawks since a long-ago grand-relative drove herself alone in a buckboard through Indian territory on the Oregon Trail to attend university on the Hill in Lawrence.

The football rivalry is thought to be the longest uninterrupted matchup in organized American collegiate sports, west of the Mississippi -- since 1891.

The cultural rivalry is deep and ancient and rooted in brutal Free State/Slave State politics. The philosophical issues were more complex than simply pro- and anti-slavery positions; it was a broad debate on western expansion and visions of our emerging national identity. Civil War histories tend to overlook the Border Wars, but the Kansas-Missouri line is where the national debate came to life. And death.

Memories still linger. As history goes, it wasn’t all that long ago. Harry Truman’s mother, for example, is often cited as a profound influence on her son -- and she lived through those times as a Missouri-border farm girl. And she was a passionate, shrill, life-long Jayhawk hater.

As a schoolboy, my father offered to contribute to my university education at any institution that might accept me. Save one. Missouri.

As a schoolboy in Kansas City, the hallways held a special tension the week of the KU-MU game, especially at my school, located smack on State Line Road, the opposing state just across the street, the student body pretty evenly divided. Friends were not-quite-friends that week.

Only to a somewhat lesser degree than Michigan/Ohio State coaches, and Army/Navy coaches, Kansas/Missouri football coaches were always in jeopardy if they could not compete in the essential end-of-the-season affair.

The rivalry hit its zenith in 1960, when Kansas, led by John Hadl, Curtis McClinton and Bert Coan, defeated the favored Tigers, who were rated number one in the country, 23-7. But the Jayhawks were denied a trip to the Orange Bowl soon after, and forfeited the win, thanks to a recruiting infraction involving Coan and the owner of an NFL team with ties to Kansas. (Coan was an astoundingly talented prospect. His college and pro career were tragically modest, after a pal of mine broke Coan’s leg in a spring practice scrimmage.)

The series’ competitive fire started to wane after Kansas’ last great Orange Bowl team in 1969 (and the last-second, 12th-man loss to Penn State), featuring John Riggins, Bobby Douglass and John Zook. The football teams have been backing and forthing since, with reduced passion. Most of the energy has been focused on basketball, especially in the years when the delightfully provocative Norm Stewart had the horses to give Kansas a game. In Lawrence, in these more recent years, the student body would be more likely to get aroused by a Kansas State match.

That’s all changed this year, to everyone’s surprise and delight, except for Lawrence shopkeepers who are missing a pay day and Kansas students who can’t get decent seats at Arrowhead in Kansas City (or seats at all), where the game has been moved this year, frankly, to make money for the two athletic departments. But who knew students would want tickets? The KU football facility is the oldest west of the Mississippi and hasn’t been filled in decades (except when Nebraska comes to town).

I’ll try to refrain from (Muck Fizzou) and just say: Rock Chalk! This year’s edition of the great rivalry threatens to be one for the ages. With Oregon’s loss to my other alma mater (Arizona), and wins by KU, MU and Oklahoma this weekend, the prospects are tasty. These things are always more fun when more teams are competitive...

[suzzer99]

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As a schoolboy, my father offered to contribute to my university education at any institution that might accept me. Save one. Missouri.


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Awesome. I'm seriously considering flying back to KC just for this game. My uncle has seats on the club level, front row. Also I am now 100% sure that MU is going to lose to K-State and [censored] this whole thing up. You just get a feel for these things after a while. Just like K-State blowing a 16 pt. lead to Texas A&M with 4 minutes left to blow their shot at a national title.

[jalexand42]

Well-known jayhawkers include Lane and Charles "Doc" Jennison. Jennison's vicious raids into Missouri were thorough and indiscriminate, and left five counties in western Missouri wasted, save for the standing brick chimneys of the two-storey period houses, which are still called "Jennison Monuments" in the areas. Lane and his band of militants wore red gaiters, earning them the nickname "Redlegs", or "Redleggers". This moniker was often used interchangably with the term "jayhawkers," although it was sometimes used to refer specifically to jayhawkers who refused to join units officially sanctioned by the U.S. Army. Guerrillas on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border achieved some measure of legitimacy through sanction from the Federal and Confederate governments, and the bands who scorned such sanction were typically even more vicious and indiscriminate in their methods than their bureaucratically recognized counterparts. Even within Kansas, the jayhawkers were not always popular because, in the absence of federal support, they supplied themselves by stealing horses and supplies from farmers.

Jayhawker bands waged numerous invasions of Missouri and also committed some of the most notorious atrocities of the Civil War, including the Lane-led massacre at Osceola, Missouri, in which the entire town was set aflame and at least 9 of the male residents killed. The sacking of Osceola inspired the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Jayhawkers also were accused of engineering the collapse of a jail in Kansas City in which female relatives of bushwhackers were incarcerated by Union sympathizers because of their connection to pro-Confederate guerrillas. These two incidents were prior to the Lawrence Massacre in Lawrence, Kansas, led by William Quantrill and his band of bushwhackers.




Nice choice of a mascot KU for a band of murdering idiots who burned down a jail full of WOMEN. THAT is why Quantrill burned lawrence.

[censored] Kansas.

[iron81]

This thread is awesome. I might skip poker next week to watch the game.

[jalexand42]

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And, don't even get me started on their cokehead former coach, Quinn Snyder. Or how they named their basketball arena after a 20-something girl who never attended their university or did anything of note (besides cheat through college leading Missouri to rename the arena).


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Speaking of cheating:

For being found guilty of academic fraud and other violations, football loses three scholarships per signing class for each of the next two years. The 25-scholarship maximum for most football programs is just 22 for Kansas until 2009.

KU athletics: providing answers to correspondence course tests since 2001.

[westhoff]

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As a schoolboy, my father offered to contribute to my university education at any institution that might accept me. Save one. Missouri.


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Awesome. I'm seriously considering flying back to KC just for this game. My uncle has seats on the club level, front row. Also I am now 100% sure that MU is going to lose to K-State and [censored] this whole thing up. You just get a feel for these things after a while. Just like K-State blowing a 16 pt. lead to Texas A&M with 4 minutes left to blow their shot at a national title.

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Don't ever remind me of this again.

[KUJustin]

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And, don't even get me started on their cokehead former coach, Quinn Snyder. Or how they named their basketball arena after a 20-something girl who never attended their university or did anything of note (besides cheat through college leading Missouri to rename the arena).


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Speaking of cheating:

For being found guilty of academic fraud and other violations, football loses three scholarships per signing class for each of the next two years. The 25-scholarship maximum for most football programs is just 22 for Kansas until 2009.

KU athletics: providing answers to correspondence course tests since 2001.

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Holy crap, are you kidding me??

Remind everyone why your arena was renamed... go ahead.

Oh, and remember when Ricky Clemons took 24 credit hours in summer school. The guy that choked his girlfriend because she wouldn't watch Roots. The guy who violated the terms of his work release to go to a party at the University President's house at which he crashed an ATV and ended up in the hospital. Did Mizzou really think there was any chance that guy taking 24 credits would go unnoticed?

Quin Snyder and Ricky Clemons created more scandal in 3 years than KU has in their entire history.

[dkgojackets]

We need more rivalry threads like this. This game hasn't had relevance in 40 years, so now it's all coming out. I love it.

[KUJustin]

BTW, those of you with a new-found interest in the rivalry might find the all-time series tally in football interesting.

KU Media Guide: 54-52-9

MU Media Guide: 53-53-9

In 1960, Missouri was 9-0 and ranked #1 in the country. Kansas was 6-2-1 with both losses coming to teams that were #1 at the time Kansas played them. The series was tied 30-30-8 at this time.

Of course, Kansas goes on to defeat the Tigers 23-7. A guy named Bert Coan had nine carries in that game which would turn out to be pretty meaningful.

Turns out there was a lot of controversy about this guy's eligibility. MU claimed a KU booster named Bud Adams had provided improper benefits (a plane ride to some place or another). Bud Adams claimed there was no recruiting involved which I guess made it legal at the time.

So, several weeks after the game, officials from each of the 8 Big 8 schools met and addressed the issue. The rules stated that a 3/4 majority (6 teams) was needed to declare him ineligible. Well, the first order or business that day was changing the policy such that only a simple majority was needed. Once that was settled they went on to declare Coan ineligible with a 5-3 vote. Kansas thus had to forfeit the game.

Missouri went on to technically finish 11-0, but the AP essentially denied this claim and ranked them 5th rather than giving them the title.

Due to the Coan ruling Kansas also forfeited a game to Kansas, but Colorado does not claim the win. They state, "Kansas used an ineligible player and that game was later forfeited to Colorado, but all records are computed with the result that took place on the field."

So, bottom line, if you go by what 5/8 of the Big 8 decides in a hotel several weeks later, the series is tied. If you go by the results on the field it's a 2 game edge to Kansas.

Link to the article that I plagiarized a couple of times here.

[RunDownHouse]

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So, bottom line, if you go by what 5/8 of the Big 8 decides in a hotel several weeks later, the series is tied. If you go by the results on the field it's a 2 game edge to Kansas.

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Isn't that a bit like saying, "Sure KU played with the Patriots OL, but the results on the field are all that mattered!"

Seriously, Mizzou has enough skeletons in the closet to smear them without being intellectually dishonest about it.