Saturday's Kansas vs. Missouri game likely the final battle in Border War

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Any matchup between Missouri and Kansas is intense. Their rivalry traces back to the Civil War, spawning legendary tales, driving wedges between families and growing more bitter with time. The schools can't even agree on the series record.

So this one could be particularly interesting.

Missouri is spurning the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference after this season, and Kansas has rebuffed any notion that it will play its age-old rival out of conference. That means Saturday's showdown at Arrowhead Stadium could decide the all-time series, or maybe not -- depending on who you ask.

"The border showdown, Kansas-Missouri. I don't think there is anything else that needs to be said," Jayhawks coach Turner Gill said. "This is a game people circle on their calendars."

The Tigers claim to own the advantage, pointing out a 1960 loss that Kansas had to forfeit for using an ineligible player. The Jayhawks argue the series is even -- 55-55-9.

Everyone agrees this is the last time, at least for the foreseeable future, for a rivalry whose roots stretch to the late 1850s -- not on the gridiron, but in the small towns of western Missouri and eastern Kansas, when pro-slavery secessionists and anti-slavery Unionists often would clash.

"As a legacy, people are always going to talk about the last game played, so I think it brings about a little more significance to this game," Gill said. "It's the last opportunity to play in this type of situation, so it's very, very meaningful."

The series began in 1891, some 40 years after the abolitionist John Brown stoked the fever of pro-slavery Missourians, and fewer than three decades after William Quantrill's raiders crossed into Kansas and raped, pillaged and plundered their way through Lawrence, burning everything in their path.

One Kansas coach once said that Quantrill graduated from Missouri -- of course that wasn't true -- but it's the kind of story that illustrates the anger still coursing through the two sides.

Just this fall, the Board of Aldermen in Osceola, Mo., drafted a resolution condemning a raid by jayhawkers in 1861. They called on Kansas to drop "Jayhawks" as its nickname because it associates the school with "a group of domestic terrorists," to which a Kansas school spokesman responded in an e-mail to the Columbia (Mo.) Tribune: "A Jayhawk is a blue bird with a red head and a big yellow beak that wears boots. It would be hard to confuse it with anyone with terrorist intent."

The school spokesman couldn't stop there.

"We admit we have been terrorizing the Tigers on the basketball court for some time," the e-mail went on. "Tigers have been known to kill people. Bears, too."

"The rivalry may not be replaceable, but the quality of the competition certainly is," second-year Kansas law school student Bruno Simoes said. "I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I don't think we won the rivalry. I'd say they ended it, so if there's any kind of guilt, it can be on them."

Missouri places the blame for it ending on Kansas.

"Our desire is we want to keep playing," Missouri athletic director Mike Alden said. "I have great respect for Kansas, and if they decide they don't want to do that, it certainly won't be because we don't want to play. I think from a nonconference standpoint there's no question we could play every sport, every year, for the next 100 years."

Bill Hatton, who grew up in Columbia and graduated from Missouri in 1961, said he's attended about 30 editions of the Border War -- the game's name recently was changed to Border Showdown in an attempt to become more politically correct. Hatton will be there again Saturday, along with his grandson Nathan, who has developed his own scornfulness for the Jayhawks over the years.

"We ought to keep that thing going," the elder Hatton said about the rivalry. "I mean, what the hell is wrong with them?"

Mike McDonough, who graduated from Missouri in 1973, likes to tell a story about visiting a game at Kansas several years ago. He had two extra tickets and his brother wanted to give them away, but McDonough said, "This is Lawrence. Nobody wants to go watch football." So he put them in an envelope and wrote "free tickets" on it and placed them under a windshield wiper before going into the game.

"When we came back out," McDonough said, "there were 10 tickets in the envelope."

Tickets figure to be a little tougher to come by Saturday.

The Tigers (6-5, 4-4) will be playing for bowl positioning, with Gary Pinkel back on the sideline after serving a one-game suspension for a drunken driving arrest. Kansas (2-9, 0-8) could be playing for Gill's job, trying to salvage what has been a mostly forgettable four months.

Both teams understand the importance of the game on their season, just as they both understand its historical significance. If there's one game to win each year, it's this one.

"I think somewhere down the road they will play again, but for now, I guess this is how it's going to be," Kansas linebacker Steven Johnson said. "This is like that last battle to the whole war. It has been a long journey and this is going to be the game that will decide it all."