Mizzou and Kansas State to resume football series

Missouri and Kansas State will resume their football series in 2022, when the Wildcats are scheduled to play the Tigers on Sept. 10 in Manhattan.

As part of a two-year agreement, the teams will also play on Sept. 16, 2023 in Columbia.

The teams have not played each other since 2011, Mizzou’s final football season in the Big 12 before joining the Southeastern Conference. K-State won that year’s game 24-17 and Mizzou leads the all-time series 60-32-5.

“Mizzou-K-State renews a great natural rivalry between two schools that are less than 250 miles apart,” Mizzou athletic director Jim Sterk said in a release announcing the series. “We are excited about the opportunity to resume this long-time series and believe this will be a great series for our fans.”

The Wildcats are also scheduled to play other Power Five opponents in future years: Mississippi State in 2018 and 2019, Vanderbilt in 2020, Stanford in 2021, Arizona in 2024 and 2025, Washington State in 2026 and 2029, Colorado in 2027 and 2028 and Rutgers in 2030 and 2031.

“The combination of needing a Power Five opponent on the schedule each year and being able to work with a regional institution that we have such a strong football history with, made perfect sense for K-State,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor said in a release. “I know our fans will be excited to play the Tigers again.”

Missouri is also scheduled to play Sept. 27 at Middle Tennessee State in 2022 and needs two more nonconference opponents. The Tigers’ 2023 schedule only has one opening left. In addition to the game against Kansas State in 2023, Missouri hosts Middle Tennessee State on Sept. 9 and plays at Memphis on Sept. 23.

This agreement between Missouri and Kansas State fulfills the Southeastern Conference’s requirement for its teams to schedule at least one Power Five school or Notre Dame each season.

This year’s Missouri football schedule included back-to-back nonconference games at home against Idaho on Oct. 21 and at Connecticut on Oct. 28. Missouri coach Barry Odom said after the game at Connecticut that he would prefer to have the Tigers’ schedules front-loaded with nonconference games, but he acknowledged that when considering fans’ experience at blowout nonconference games, the topic of what an ideal schedule is could be “a debate for hours.”

Odom has also said, after MU played Kansas in an exhibition basketball game, that he thinks the Tigers and Jayhawks should play “every year in every sport because it’s pretty awesome.”

This story was originally published November 16, 2017 at 1:58 PM with the headline "Mizzou and Kansas State to resume football series."