Border War: An uncivil beginning to great rivalry
Sphere: Related ContentIf only Kansas and Missouri could have settled their differences on a football field in the 1850s. Right here in Kansas City, just like Saturday. Maybe blood wouldn’t have flowed in the streets.In understanding the passion of top college rivalries, it’s enough to know that Ohio State detests Michigan, Auburn and Alabama divides a state, and others are equally spirited.Then there’s Missouri vs. Kansas.
Contests go by the name Border War, the nickname not a product of the schools’ publicity departments but because Missourians and Kansans who mostly lived close to the border once waged real war against each other.
Hostilities date to pre-Civil War days and involve the issues that tore apart a nation. Bleeding Kansas became a war zone over the slavery question with deadly consequences. Murder and mayhem broke out between the opposing factions.
There had to have been direct descendents of the chaos sitting among the 3,000 at Kansas City’s Exposition Park in 1891, when the Tigers and Jayhawks first met on a football field.
That’s what makes Kansas vs. Missouri different.
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With Kansas and Missouri building remarkable seasons throughout autumn, opposing fans have gone at it like, well, digital bushwhackers and jayhawkers, exchanging barbs and insults in today’s fan weapon of choice — keyboard strokes and the “send” button to the message-board battlegrounds.
Historical figures William Quantrill, John Brown, Doc Jennison, the Younger Brothers and Jesse James — yes, that Jesse James — have been evoked. The terrorism along the Missouri-Kansas border recounted.
It’s a football game they’re playing on Saturday, voices of reason interject. No sense in dredging up the sacrifices and sins of generations past.
Besides, the game’s participants clearly don’t need the motivation, especially this year with division, conference and even the national championship at stake.
This modern civil war angle seems silly to Van Robinson, 81, of Parkville, who played for Missouri in 1944 when the Tigers met Kansas in Kansas City.
“This was stuff that I never heard when I was playing,” Robinson said.
But he did a few years ago. Robinson and his family attended a Missouri-Kansas game in Lawrence, and he couldn’t believe the “Muck Fizzou” T-shirts or the degree of hostility toward his group by the students.
Finally, somebody in Robinson’s group turned to a Kansas fan and asked for the source of hate toward Mizzou.
“He said, ‘Because you had slaves.’ And I thought, ‘My god, they’re living in the 19th century. What’s going on?’ ”
Kansas fans point to the game at Columbia in the late 1990s when the Jayhawks’ marching band was pelted with liquor bottles and one band member was struck by an unopened can of soda. The Missouri student president at the time put it in historical perspective.
“Other universities, their rivalry is sort of superficial,” said Rob Willard. “But Missouri and Kansas has a long history. You’d be hard-pressed to find another where opposing sides fought and killed each other in the Civil War.”
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