Return of Border War between Kansas and Missouri serves a reminder of what was lost because of conference realignment.
Missouri opted for the SEC’s stability and financial windfall, but the Big 12 exit meant the Tigers sacrificed their top rivalries, none bigger than Kansas.
The Kansas-Missouri rivalry reached its zenith in 2007, when the Big 12 was rocking and rolling with a batch of entertaining quarterbacks.
If he’d heard the comment anywhere else, Kansas coach Lance Leipold wouldn’t have been so surprised. But, profanity at church? Leipold was taken aback by what a parishioner said to him at Sunday service.
Kick their ass.
Not a request, mind you. An order, that Leipold’s Jayhawks put a boot into Missouri.
Welcome back, Border War.
It’s been too long since the Kansas-Missouri rivalry was last played in 2011. The time apart did not change that each team ranks as the other’s biggest rival.
So, who can blame a churchgoing Jayhawk fan for being fired up, and just a touch profane, about this Week 2 rivalry renewal in Columbia, Missouri?
As Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz put it before the season, “People died in this rivalry.”
That’s not exaggeration, when discussing a series that derives its name from the bloody years of fighting between pro- and anti-slavery factions along the Kansas-Missouri border in the years leading up to the Civil War.
“It’s intense,” Drinkwitz said, “and we don’t like each other.”
Don’t like? More like, hate. That word comes up often in discussions about a rivalry that got interrupted after Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC.
Some might say these schools hate each other more than they love themselves.
The Lawrence Journal-World once quoted former Kansas coach Don Fambrough’s unflinchingly blunt description of this rivalry: ‘We’re the good people; they’re the bad people. That’s the best way I know to explain it. I don’t like their people, I don’t like their players, I don’t like a damn thing about ’em.’
Other than that, Mr. Fambrough, what do you think of Missouri?
The feelings go both ways.
A documentary called “Armageddon at Arrowhead,” will release later this month about the 2007 Border War clash in Kansas City. Kansas was undefeated and ranked No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series rankings entering that late-November matchup. Missouri came in ranked No. 4.
The Tigers won 36-28 and ascended to a No. 1 ranking in the BCS and AP rankings, their first No. 1 ranking since 1960.
“I’m not allowed to say the word hate,” former Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, who coached the Tigers for 15 seasons, says in a preview trailer for the documentary, “but I’m going to say I hate them, too.
“When you play in that game, it’s everything.”
The rivalry reached its zenith in 2007. ESPN’s “College GameDay” broadcast from outside Arrowhead Stadium.
A true test of a rivalry’s significance, though, comes when both teams stink.
Consider the 2002 Border War. Neither Missouri nor Kansas entered their meeting that season owning so much as a single conference victory, and still fans packed Faurot Field on a dreary day in late October. After the Tigers won in a blowout, Missouri’s players – yes, the players – led a surge to tear down a goal post.
And, who cares that Kansas was a two-win team? Never mind records. Winning the Border War means a chance to take glee in your rival’s demise.
When turmoil hit the Big 12, Missouri found the exits for the SEC
The series pause after Missouri left the Big 12 reduced the rivalry to memories and schadenfreude. College freshmen who will experience this game were toddlers when the rivalry was last played.
There’s little point now in playing the blame game for the rivalry interruption. Missouri didn’t put the realignment carousel into motion. The Big 12 fought raids from all corners, starting in the summer of 2010.
Colorado left for the Pac-10. Nebraska vamoosed for the Big Ten. Texas spearheaded a flirtation with the Pac-10 that would have brought along Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Texas decided to stay put and scuttled the idea of a Pac-16, but, by then, the realignment carousel was twirling. The SEC nabbed Texas A&M, and, more than a year later, Missouri accepted an SEC invite to bring the SEC to 14 members.
All told, the Big 12 lost four members in that round of realignment. Missouri was the last to go.
Multiple schools that stayed in the Big 12 flirted with an exit. Kansas reportedly put out feelers to the Big Ten. Oklahoma president David Boren set off alarm bells at Missouri in September 2011 when he announced that the Sooners would not be “a wallflower” in realignment.
“From our perspective, there was no trust (within the Big 12),” Mike Alden, who was Missouri’s athletic director, told me in 2023.
Missouri opted for the SEC’s stability and financial opportunity and parted with a conference where Texas put its thumb on the scales. The upside of the SEC came at a cost, though. Missouri sacrificed decades-long rivalries, none bigger than the Border War. Kansas got all up in its feels about the breakup, and, well, the teams stopped playing.
Oklahoma and Oklahoma State find themselves in a similar situation now, another rivalry interrupted by realignment and the ensuing fallout. Texas-Texas A&M went dormant for 12 seasons, until the Longhorns joined the Aggies in the SEC. Colorado and Nebraska have played just four times in the past 15 years. Old Big 12 rivalries, all of them.
Missouri will play at Kansas next season, before the rivalry goes on another hiatus.
At its peak, the old Big 12 was something to behold
Excuse me while I pour one out for the 2007 Big 12, when Missouri and Kansas were rocking and rolling. LSU won the national championship that season, but the Big 12 teemed with excellent quarterbacks, and the conference supplied the nation’s most entertaining football.
Chase Daniel’s fourth-place Heisman Trophy finish remains the highest for a Missouri player since World War II. Kansas countered with quarterback Todd Reesing. Daniel completed 40 – yes, 40 – passes, and the Tigers toppled Kansas that season in front of a crowd of 80,537 that exceeded Arrowhead’s listed capacity.
For a week, anyway, Missouri ruled college football, while the Big 12 enjoyed center stage.
Within three years, the conference ripped apart. That round of realignment, and another a decade later, made the SEC and Big Ten bigger, richer and stronger. Elsewhere, realignment took a toll. Worse, rivalries that fuel college football paused.
Throughout the interruption, emotions for the Border War didn’t die. If you need proof of that, just visit Leipold’s church.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.