Kansas State fans push a plow. You knew that, didn’t you? All of them. And wear overalls. And drive a tractor.</p><p>“We kind of consider them country boys,” says Ryan Swartz, a 28-year-old KU fan.</p><p>Missouri fans are loud, obnoxious and uncouth. Everyone knows that. Run around with an MU fan, and your IQ will decrease a few dozen points by default. Won’t even take that long, either. They speak by screaming, their hair is wily, their attitudes unseemly.</p><p>“Wannabes,” Zach Unruh, another KU fan, says of MU.</p><p>And heaven help the Kansas fans. They think the clouds part when they enter the room. So arrogant and obnoxious. Then again, heaven help the rest of us. </p><p>“Worst fans in the Big 12,” MU fan Ryan McGinnis, 28, says.</p><p>There’s not much good to say about your rival, not when it’s Big 12 tournament week and when the drinks are flowing. The sun has set on the tournament’s first day, but that doesn’t mean the fans are sleeping. Instead, they have packed the bars at the Power & Light District on Wednesday night, as Texas and Iowa State end the first full day of the conference tournament.</p><p>While the final minutes tick down, the hapless and the hopeful turn to socializing, the liquid courage easing them into the tournament’s second day.</p><p>While they’re at it, fans took aim at their rivals’ most well-known — if exaggerated – stereotypes: K-State fans are a legion of farmers, MU fans a group of blue-collar loudmouths, KU fans a bunch of spoiled children who have been given their sporting gifts without much effort. </p><p>None of the stereotypes is true, of course. Well, not universally. But the images are strong for each fanbase, and regardless of the rival, there’s something there that makes it inferior – unless you’re talking about your own team.</p><p> “Humble, honorable, successful,” Zach Unruh, a KU fan, says of his own. “Liking Kansas is like chocolate ice cream: What’s not to like?”</p><p>Unruh isn’t finished.</p><p>“How many synonyms are there for ‘winner’?” he says.</p><p>It was no wonder Wednesday night that some fans flexed their pride at some of downtown Kansas City’s favorite nightspots. Upward of seven teams are fighting for position in the NCAA Tournament, and their performances in this week’s conference tournament will go a long way toward deciding that. That’s why MU fans might have been more subdued Wednesday night, hours after Nebraska upset the Tigers at the Sprint Center.</p><p>MU fans’ egos were bruised by the time the sun went down, and although few were willing to bypass a chance to bash a few rivals, there was a feeling at McFadden’s that Wednesday wasn’t a time for overly puffed chests.</p><p>“If we can squeak out one victory (against KU),” MU fan Rob Ellerman says, “it’s enormous.”</p><p>There exists a prism in college sports, and if you look at it only from a certain angle, the rest of the landscape appears different. KU fans are seen in one way by MU and K-State fans; K-State and MU fans are seen far differently by KU fans. It just depends on which side you’re on.</p><p>Not that it’s limited to teams in Missouri and Kansas. </p><p>What about Oklahoma fans?</p><p>“They don’t do very much thinking,” says Charles Riddle, 51, who wears a KU pullover.</p><p>And Texas?</p><p>“They’re just country,” Dave Thomas, an Oklahoma fan, says at Johnny’s Tavern.</p><p>KU?</p><p>“Elitist,” Jim Perkins says.</p><p>MU?</p><p>“They think they’re better than everything,” Swartz says, taking shelter under the ceiling at KC Live.</p><p>K-State?</p><p>“Hayseeds,” Unruh says.</p><p>On and on it goes. Then it comes time for some self-reflection. If MU fans think KU and K-State fans — and all the rest, for that matter — are a herd of feral beasts, what must they think of themselves? After all, no fan base is perfect. And if such harsh judgment comes so easily of others, surely a fair opinion is made inward.</p><p>Then again …</p><p>“Smart,” MU fan McGinnis says. “We’re pretty nice. Cordial. We’re really cordial.”</p><p>“Humble,” Riddle says of KU fans.</p><p>“We fight for everything we get,” K-State fan Danny Higgins says.</p><p>On a noisy patio late Wednesday, Swartz lights a cigarette and advances a conversation. He’s in the middle of a sentence when McGinnis, who had stepped inside a bar for a moment, throws open the glass door and screams on his way out.</p><p>Swartz shakes his head.</p><p>“There you go,” he says of McGinnis. “There’s the typical Mizzou fan. You can never get along with them.”