Tigers vs. University of Kansas JayhawksNovember 29, 2008
Tiger AP ranking: 12thTV programming directors love dreaming up names to promote different college football weekends. The weekend the big round ball teams establish their male dominance over the eenie weenie peenie teams is labeled “Separation Saturday.” “Redemption Saturday” describes any weekend when a couple of squads that got embarrassed last year line up against the same teams. And “Grab some Doritos and Watch this Sorry Excuse for a Sporting Event Saturday” covers weekends late in the year where the glamour programs run up the score on unranked opponents who are just trying to make it to the off-season without rupturing any vital organs.
Hype being the currency of sports programming, the weekend that doesn’t need a promotional twist gets one anyway: Rivalry Weekend. It’s the weekend your school plays the team you hate. Missouri Tiger fans take Rivalry Weekend a step further than the networks. Starting the Monday before, they christen everything leading up to the Kansas game by a simple but elegant sobriquet. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hate Week.
It’s fun to hate. Anyone who tells you differently is lying or stupid (many Victoria's Secret models think hating is just awful). Channeled correctly, though creative mocking of the other team’s idiot fan base, ridiculous traditions, and numbskull coaches, hating can save fans thousands of dollars on therapy.
Missouri’s hatred of Kansas runs deep, with roots in the Civil War. A “Jayhawker” was the term coined to describe Charles Jennison’s band of lawless marauders who killed and pillaged indiscriminately, murdering innocent people both in Kansas and, when deputized, across the border. Missouri wasn’t without fault in the Civil War, of course—their lawless marauders were called “Bushwhackers.” But after the conflict, the University of Missouri administration left the “bushwhacker” name to the history books (and the dictionary), calling their football team the Tigers—the nickname of the group of men who defended the city of Columbia during the War Between the States. The University of Kansas administration, conversely, embraced the Jayhawker’s tenuous Union association and overlooked their bloody history. Now the name Kansas Jayhawk stands beside storied franchises like the Phoenix Rapists and Portland Goose Steppers.
The head-to-head record between the universities stood at 54-54-9 since they began hating competitively in 1890, making this the second-longest running rivalry in the country. One of those 54 losses knocked Missouri from a 1960 national championship run—a game that the NCAA later made Kansas forfeit for using an ineligible player. Kansas officially claims that game as a win to this day. The Jaywalks also claim a co-Big XII North championship for 2007, despite the fact that they lost head-to-head to Missouri, the tiebreaker according to rules they accepted to play under. Not unlike the Clintons, when the Jayhawks lose, they won't go away.
The hate fault line does not run evenly across Missouri, however. Its epicenter sits in Kansas City, where Mizzou alums are outnumbered by Jayhawks. Hatred runs 24/7 there, and society matrons have been known to scoop up handfuls of mashed potatoes and sling them at rival fans during charity events for sick children. On the St. Louis side of the state, the Kansas football team is looked upon more as an annoyance that flairs up annually, like a case of red-and-blue herpes.
It merits mention that if there’s one thing the powerful University of Missouri alumni insist on from a head coach, it’s beating Kansas. Who are these powerful alumni? No one knows, exactly. My father bitched mythically about them, though. They lived in Kansas City and held clandestine meetings to select head coaches—meetings that concluded with black and gold smoke emerging from the chimney of Jesse Hall. Al Onofrio, the Tiger coach from 1971-77, developed a reputation for fielding teams no non-conference powerhouse wanted to play. His Tigers beat Notre Dame, USC, Alabama and Ohio State—all on the road. But Uncle Al had the temerity to go 1-6 against Kansas, sealing his fate. My old man, an unapologetic Onofrio backer, never forgave the powerful alumni.
Going into the 2008 Border Showdown, Gary Pinkel teams had posted a 4-3 record against the Jaywalks. Not shabby, not dominant. But the most recent win was the one everyone remembered.
In 2007, the MU-KU series shifted from its regular rotation between Columbia and Lawrence to the halfway point of Kansas City, where the series had last been played in 1910 (fans then were served tankards of mead and mutton legs and encouraged to throw their leftovers at the opposing players). The first "Border Showdown" ("Border War" and "Border We Hate Your Ass Face" both deemed too negative) kicked off at Arrowhead Stadium on November 24, 2007 with the #4 Tigers taking on the undefeated #2 Jayhawks. Top-ranked LSU had lost, so Tiger and Jayhawk fans gathered that evening to witness a battle for the #1 ranking in the country. ESPN GameDay was there, earning its highest ratings of the year. ESPN's Lee Corso donned the Truman the Tiger mascot head, predicting a Mizzou win and returning a mascot head that smelled of Vitalis and Ben Gay.
The frigid air crackling with beer breath and excitement, Kansas fell behind early and then clawed back like the mythical birds they are, the game ending when their scrappy (read: short) quarterback, Todd Reesing, got slammed to the turf for a safety. The image of Reesing rising with a divot of Arrowhead turf wedged into his facemask showed up as a cherished Hallmark keepsake ornament on Tiger fans' Christmas trees. In the wee hours of the post-game morning, my friends and I shared champagne as we watched the first web news accounts appear declaring Mizzou the #1 team in the country.
The 2008 Border Showdown, on paper, didn’t—couldn’t—live up to that. I landed in Kansas City on Friday afternoon and hoofed it down to the Plaza entertainment and shopping district. Growing up on the opposite side of the state, my college self always found Kansas City girls wildly exotic—more western in attitude as well as geography, and seemingly always blonde. When Deana Green swiveled around on campus and asked me to help her with her studies, my defenses splintered like one of Mizzou’s blown deep zone coverages. In present day, window-shopping for nothing more than where my first beer would be, little had changed. Kansas City women are flat-out pretty.
This was “Black Friday,” the biggest shopping day of the year, but the Plaza wasn’t particularly crowded thanks to the rapidly tanking economy. Two grinning college-age guys held a sign that promoted “Happy Buy Nothing Day,” a nihilistic economic plan that made about as much sense as anything else proposed by the experts. I ducked into Houston’s, an upscale restaurant chain, to grab a beer and catch the Cornhuskers beat Colorado on a 57-yard field goal to pull within a game of the Tigers in the Big XII North. Then I picked up a bottle of wine and double-timed it through the brisk night, back to the sprawling, historic house in the south Plaza area. My hosts Ginny and Morrie, with Kitty in tow, pulled into the driveway within minutes after I let myself in, effectively cutting short my plan to help myself to some silverware.
“How much money would it take for you to lick a sweaty linebacker’s asshole for five full seconds?” Ginny asked, and from the looks on Kitty and Morrie’s face, I could see that their answers had already been duly recorded. Well-publicized government bailout packages notwithstanding, I could not think of a figure high enough. The women volunteered $25,000 and $50,000, respectively—figures I found sluttishly low—and Morrie asked Kitty if her price might drop further for a middle-aged Jewish guy “fresh from the shower.”
The tone of the evening set, we plowed through my bottle of wine and a one-hitter disguised as a lipstick case and repaired to dinner. Five or six bottles of wine later, I found myself back in their living room making the argument that “Stay with Me” was the greatest rock song ever recorded. I had ingested the sort of snootful that makes one oblivious to the time, and if somebody hadn’t taken the first wobbly lurch toward bed I might still be in the living room petting their ancient dog, Buddy. We dropped eight Alka-Seltzer and careened upstairs, sans sweaty linebackers (I can only speak for myself here).
The next morning I was in a rush to get to Arrowhead, and Kitty’s family doesn’t rush. The weather had turned from cold to cold and rainy. Once we got some coffee in us and hit the pavement, Kitty kicked into gear and drove like she meant it. We arrived at Tim “Buddy” May’s tailgate about an hour and a half before the 11:30 kickoff. Tim’s dad, Missouri state representative Bob May, greeted us with a cold beer and a warm, can-I-count-on-your-vote-in November handshake. A small planetary system of Tiger fans—and a few KU relatives—scarfed Jimmy John’s sandwiches and downed shots of Hot Damn schnapps. Bob May stayed above the fray (his campaign slogan). As long as you could keep yourself reasonably dry, the weather wouldn’t be a factor. On the partially resodded grass field, however, sloppy would rule.
Two sandwich sections and a cinnamon bun later, it was go time. The stadium concourse was one big, wet Petri dish, but my $12 poncho performed admirably after being scrunched up in a ball since the Nevada game. Fans filled in slowly, with large empty patches of seats showing on the Kansas side. I took this as a testament to the weather, Mizzou as 16 point favorites, and the Kansas credo, used whenever convenient, “We’re a basketball school.”
As in the Illini game, our seats were positioned close to the players’ tunnel. At Arrowhead both teams come out of the same portal. The Kansas captains emerged in all white, without the obnoxious red socks they’d worn previously, another embracing of their Civil War butchery (the most savage, SS-inspiring branch of the Jayhawkers wore red hosiery).
The Tigers came out in yellow jerseys, confirming the rumors circulating the week before. This was their first time wearing them since the 1984 “all-mustard” game against Notre Dame, and the result was equally grotesque. For a tradition-laden school, Missouri struggles with uniform colors. Once upon a time their colors were black and old gold. At some juncture the old gold changed to “MU gold,” a color filed under "sunglow" in a 64-count box of Crayolas. Whichever yellowish mutation Nike hoodwinked our apparently colorblind athletic director into, it looked like something a high school team might turn their acne-riddled noses up at. I’m sure that many ten-year old Mizzou fans will receive gold Tiger jerseys on Christmas morning. They can be forgiven. What can’t is their parents’ encouragement of the sort of Moulin Rouge pageantry that’s come to epitomize the Nike-test kitchen fops of the NCAA, the Oregon Ducks.
Their team's record standing at 6-5, several Kansas players had stated earlier in the week that a win over the Tigers would make their season. In 2007 they finished the year 13-1, Jayhawk head coach Mark Mangino edging out Gary Pinkel for national coach of the year honors. When college football fans, especially Mizzou fans, talk about the Kansas, two things invariably come to up: First, that the Jayhawks had an easier schedule than Mizzou in 2007, and second, that their head coach is a regular fatty. Mangino is, in fact, morbidly obese, like an orange with a head on it. He is larger than Abe Gibron, the gigantic Chicago Bears head coach who, legend has it, once ate an entire lamb in one sitting. In the Xbox version of NCAA Football, game designers compassionately knocked 100 pounds off his video image. Still, any honest Missouri fan will admit that while Mangino may tear the roofs off Pizza Huts for a light snack, the man can coach.
The Tigers obliged the Jayhawks’ season-salvaging dream by coming out throwing the football in the soupy conditions. Chase Daniel misfired his first pass, the second was dropped, and the third intercepted by Darrell Stuckey (scion of the pecan log tycoons).
Mizzou game plans tend to disregard time of possession because of the offense’s quick-strike capabilities, but when those quick strikes don’t materialize the defense can be on the field a long time—like, say, an entire first half. On their third possession, Daniel ran 48 yards on a broken play, giving the Tiger what would have been their virgin first down, but Stuckey tomahawked the ball out of his mitts and fell on the fumble. The score stood 19-10 at halftime, the Jayhawks indeed playing like salvaging their dignity depended on it. Still, even in these craptacular conditions, I felt convinced that Mizzou wouldn’t keep beating themselves.
The rain turned to sleet, then snow, then a rare mix meteorologists term schlut. When the score turned 26-10, the Tigers began running the ball, darting between the resodded and unresodded (?) parts of the field. The ground game began to click, opening up the passing lanes. In quick succession, Jeremy Maclin and Tommy Saunders pulled in TD passes to make the score 26-23.
With just under seven minutes left in the game, Mizzou grabbed their first lead of the game—a pass that Chase Coffman, clearly hobbled by turf toe, gutted into the end zone. But Kansas kept the pressure on. Despite getting slammed to the ground like an actual size rag doll, Reesing kept getting back up and scrambling for time. The lead changed twice more, as the clock began to become a factor.
In the waning minute of the game, KU trailed 37-33 and drove into Tiger territory. Mizzou’s Carl Gettis almost picked off a Reesing pass but couldn’t haul it in as he crashed out of bounds. With 33 seconds left, Kansas stalled at 4th and 7 from the 29. Both sides of the stadium roared, raising the decibel level to the loudest it had been all day. Mangino called for a timeout to settle his charges. Reesing took the snap and the Tigers sent a blitz. The Thumbellina QB scampered out of trouble and short-armed a wobbly pass that found wideout Kerry Meier as he squirted past yet another gobsmacked Tiger defender.
I don’t know much about coverage schemes, but it’s a fair statement to make that the Missouri secondary had not improved since the first game of the season. In fact, they may have gotten more confused.
The Tigers got the football back with 19 seconds left. They got close, but with 5 seconds left they couldn’t risk running another play. Jeff Wolfort’s 54-yard field goal try off the wet surface knuckleballed and dribbled harmlessly through the end zone .
For the second time this season I had watched a game that had come down to one play, culminating in the Tigers’ opponent dancing onto the field. Mangino wasn’t hard to find, holding up the Lamar Hunt trophy and hugging it as if it were slathered in chocolate. Jayhawk and the fat man had showed up ready to play, and as much as it pained me to admit it, they deserved the game as much or more than the Tigers did. Mizzou played hard, but they didn't play consistently, and they turned the ball over three times.
We trudged away from the stadium. The lots were segregated, Tiger fans on one side of Arrowhead and Beakers on the other, so the celebrating could only be heard in the distance. Back at the car, I removed my prized Mizzou stocking cap and squeezed about 8 ounces of rain water from the fuzz ball on top.
Kitty drove me straight to the airport (ticket purchased before austerity program implementation). I sloshed onto the plane, still wet from the game. While I traveled back to Chicago, a private University of Wyoming plane took flight the other way, carrying with it Mizzou’s offensive coordinator Dave Christiansen. The next morning he would be confirmed as new head coach of the Wyoming Cowboys. Whether a coach's impending departure causes any lack of focus is the sort of thing a fan base always wonders about, and the team always denies. Either way, it doesn't matter--it's just the way the coach bounces in collegiate sports.
In the strictest sense, the Border Showdown game didn’t change a thing for the Tigers. They'd still play in a BCS bowl game if they won the Big XII Championship, and they'd still compete in a decidedly second tier bowl game if they didn’t.
On the other hand, we had made our despised rivals’ day, and with that, their season. Which as any fan will tell you, changes everything.
