Missouri Tigers, Kansas Jayhawks and the revival of old-fashioned hostility

This story is the third of three parts in the series “Border Tales,” which chronicles the unique hostility between Mizzou and Kansas ahead of their football game Saturday. It dates back to at least the 1850s, when there was an actual border war over an issue that eventually tore the United States apart. Over a century later, historians, football players and more hold strong opinions about the rivalry and its blood-stained roots.

Since Missouri moved from the Big 12 to the SEC on July 1, 2012, the program has lived quite a second life in the South.

The Tigers tallied consecutive SEC title game appearances in 2013 and 2014. A treacherous 2015 campaign was followed by middling seasons under Barry Odom and Eli Drinkwitz, but the latter would help the program regain national prominence. Since 2012, certain players and games are forever etched in the memories of those who watched.

But an old friend wasn’t there. When MU left the Big 12, it left behind the oldest rivalry west of the Mississippi River.

“They (the SEC) chose us because they felt our program could be one of the best in the country,” former Mizzou football coach Gary Pinkel said. “That’s why we were chosen from the two of us where we’re going to go.”

The matchup history is one of the most storied in college football. From 1891-2011, Mizzou and Kansas played each other in football every year except 1918 (influenza pandemic). The game’s hiatus puts it in exclusive company. Out of 34 matchups between FBS teams that have been played at least 110 times, Mizzou-Kansas is one of two that hasn’t happened the past two seasons.

The other such matchup is Kansas-Nebraska. It was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that led to the Bleeding Kansas period of violent conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the Kansas Territory. From that conflict came the cross-border violence that morphed over time into the Missouri-Kansas rivalry of today.

Cross-border raids fuel belligerence

The legacy of the conflict is ... complicated. Its most explosive event was Quantrill’s Raid in August 1863, when a group of Confederate guerrillas led by William Quantrill laid waste to Lawrence and killed upward of 200 people, some of them as young as 13 years old.

“They were just shooting people down,” said Nicole Etcheson, a history professor at Ball State University. “Many Missourians insist that every 13-year-old boy that was killed by the Bushwhackers had been over in Missouri. I mean, you can’t know.”

One hundred sixty-two years later, Lawrence hasn’t forgotten. Some buildings downtown offer harrowing reminders of this dark history.

Outside what is today a parking garage, a group of Union soldiers — unarmed and asleep in tents — were trampled by horses and murdered by Quantrill’s raiders. What is today a bridal shop is one of four buildings in present-day Lawrence that survived Quantrill’s raid. The attackers robbed what was then a clothing store and killed two clerks. A ravine where Lawrence residents hid is now a park. Among Quantrill’s Raiders that day was believed to be Frank James. Teenage brother Jesse later joined up with him and the group.

Quantrill, like other prominent Confederates such as the Ku Klux Klan’s first grand wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was mythologized by Confederate sympathizers. They portrayed him as a defender of homes and families, Etcheson said. Quantrill’s Raiders had reunions that lasted into the 20th century, some of which were attended by a young Harry Truman, who grew up in western Missouri.

Into the 21st century

One gentleman at the KU-MU basketball game this past December donned a hat that said “REMEMBER QUANTRILL” while holding a license plate that said “BURN KU” along with a tattered toy Jayhawk that had its feet tied up by a rope.

“I would argue that, with Forrest and Quantrill, you’re embracing the ugliest aspects of the violence in the Civil War,” Etcheson said.

The raid was the subject of many speeches from former Kansas football coach Don Fambrough, who once said that he’d rather eat Spam forever than take one class at Mizzou. He would often fabricate facts, such as Quantrill being a Mizzou alumni, in order to fire up his team.

In March 2012, the Lawrence City Commission voted to rename a portion of 11th Street “Fambrough Drive.” One intersection near KU’s football stadium is where Fambrough Drive and Missouri Street meet. For the foreseeable future, the two will be forever conjoined.

Some western Missourians still commemorate destruction by the Jayhawkers in the intervening years. The towns of Harrisonville, Butler and Osceola were plundered during Bleeding Kansas. In September 2011, the Osceola Board of Aldermen made a bold statement, according to Dr. Jeremy Neely, a history professor at Missouri State University.

“They had drafted a resolution demanding that the University of Kansas abandon their mascot because the people in Osceola considered the Jayhawk a domestic terrorist organization,” Neely said.

Nothing came of the resolution.

That November, the Tigers and Jayhawks played for the last time in football before MU’s departure to the SEC. Mizzou won 24-10, and the nectar of victory was especially sweet for MU tight end Michael Egnew, who was recruited by both schools in high school.

“Right before I committed to Mizzou, Kansas told me that they didn’t want me to commit there,” Egnew said. “I didn’t really want to go anyway, because Mizzou was obviously a better football school.”

The rivalry still burns hot

Egnew still resents KU to this day, he said, and he isn’t alone. Even though it’s been 14 years since the last Border Showdown in football, the rivalry’s legacy has lingered.

Mike Bedosky played for Mizzou football from 1989-92, earning two All-Big Eight selections as an offensive guard. A Jefferson City product, Bedosky is now the principal at Villa Rica High School in western Georgia. Rivalries that are long in tenure and thick with hatred define college sports in the Deep South, where football is second only to faith in some places.

According to Bedosky, Dixieland has nothing on the Border Showdown.

“When I moved down here, everybody was talking about Georgia-Georgia Tech and Auburn-Alabama,” Bedosky said. “Until you’ve killed 187 people in a raid, you don’t know what a rivalry is.”

It was burned into Bedosky’s brain early on, as his mother, Deedie, graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1964. While Bedosky was at Mizzou, the Tigers went 2-2 against Kansas. But one of his proudest moments as a father, he said, was when his son, Steven, went undefeated against the Jayhawks when he played at Coastal Carolina.

“My son is 3-0 against them,” Bedosky said. “After they beat them the first time up in Lawrence, I was ecstatic.”

While Steven spent his college days in South Carolina, he was raised a Tiger in Jefferson City. In November 2008, when Steven was still in elementary school, KU beat MU on a touchdown pass with 27 seconds left in regulation.

“I went off on the TV,” Mike Bedosky said.

That summer, Mike and Steven toured MU’s football facilities with former MU assistant coach Andy Hill, who introduced the Bedoskys to a defensive assistant. It wasn’t long before Steven started grilling the assistant about the coverage on KU’s game-winning touchdown.

“I shut him up real quick,” Mike Bedosky said.

A Mizzou player in that 2008 game that caused Bedosky to explode at his TV, linebacker Brock Christopher remembers throwing his helmet across the visitor’s locker room afterward.

He had spent his entire childhood in Missouri, moving from St. Elizabeth to Kearney when he was in sixth grade, and he’d grown up watching the Border War on the basketball court.

In 2007, Kansas was picked to play in the Orange Bowl over Mizzou, even though the Tigers were ranked higher and had won the head-to-head matchup in the final week of the regular season. In the first MU-KU men’s basketball game in Columbia since that football season ended, Christopher walked into a reminder of what could’ve been for his team.

“A bunch of (KU) students were tossing oranges around,” Christopher said. “I was like, ‘You have to be kidding.’”

Christopher now works in sales for Carroll Seating’s Kansas City branch. Last year, his job called him back to the place whose fans had given him a taste of citrus-laden hell.

“Allen Fieldhouse put in 1,200 new seats last year. I ran the whole thing, so I was in Allen Fieldhouse weekly for months,” Christopher said. “My old manager said he took somebody in there with a Mizzou polo on. They made him turn it inside out.”

The rivalry is reborn at Memorial Stadium

That level of hatred figures to make its way into Columbia without much trouble Saturday. There will be a level of excitement that wasn’t present for most years between 1891-2011. Both teams often met with mediocre records, with those games representing the most important 60 minutes of their seasons.

“Our legacy was almost built on if we’re beating Kansas or not. I’m from Texas. We understand that 100%,” former MU defensive end Stryker Sulak said. “Your season could be trash, but if you beat that rival school, your season isn’t completely done, and that was always the case with Kansas.”

From 2012 to 2022, Mizzou tallied seven seasons with either five, six or seven wins. Kansas was far worse during that timespan, with a point differential of minus-2,221, the worst among all FBS teams. If that point differential were flipped to plus-2,221, Kansas would have been the fifth-best team in the country by point differential.

Recently, however, both teams have elevated themselves to greater heights. This meeting also comes with plenty of air left in both teams’ seasons. Mizzou and Kansas have only met three other times in September, but they’ve never met this early in the calendar, and both teams have yet to pick up a loss.

With such a long hiatus and a different type of personnel, the Tigers needed some schooling.

Mizzou’s roster is more geographically diverse than most MU teams of the past, with 21 states represented. Many players didn’t grow up watching the Border War, and thus there wasn’t the same collective understanding of the rivalry’s importance. Coach Eli Drinkwitz brought in guest speakers (including Hill) to lecture players on the rivalry.

Linebacker Josiah Trotter, who experienced the Backyard Brawl when he was at West Virginia, seemed to be paying attention.

“I still hate Pitt,” Trotter said. “So I guess I now hate Kansas for the rest of my life.”

On Saturday, a new chapter of the rivalry will be written. This edition will almost certainly be memorable, but many iterations of the Border War have been exactly that.

From the days of the James brothers to James Franklin, Kansas and Missouri haven’t liked each other for a long time. Saturday shouldn’t be much different.

“It is a strange hatred,” Bedosky said. “But it’s a beautiful one.”

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