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KU vs. MU

Kansas City, Mo. — Scott Harrington is taking the half-full approach.

Even if losing to his arch rival - and missing out on a Big 12 Championship and a chance at a national football title - is virtually impossible to swallow.

"I hate losing to Missouri," the Lawrence resident said Saturday, filing out of Arrowhead Stadium after his Jayhawks lost 36-28, in the annual Border War clash. "But still: We're 11-1. We're going to go to a great bowl."

Harrington pauses, allowing his family to catch up with him and his "Fighting Manginos" shirt. The loss was settling in now.

Then comes the smile of optimism - or is it revenge?

"I'm originally from Oklahoma," the Norman native said, with a grin. "The Sooners will take care of them for us next week."

With Saturday night's loss, before a sellout "home" crowd in Kansas City, Mo., Harrington and other Kansas University fans were left to search for positives that were missing from the scoreboard.

After rolling into the final regular season game undefeated - by dominating on offense, stifling others on defense, managing games with few penalties and throwing more than 200 consecutive completions without an interception - the Jayhawks found themselves in unfamiliar territory: down 21-0 early in the third quarter.

KU managed to cut the lead to six with 1:23 to go, but Missouri sacked Todd Reesing in the end zone for a safety, and KU's hopes for a No. 1 national ranking, a Big 12 title and a potential national championship were dashed.

Now, that's the dream assumed by Missouri.

"Holy smokes! We're 11-1. This is one of the greatest seasons ever," said George Grieb, owner of Lynn Electric in Lawrence, who's been coming to KU games for 22 years. "You have to put the loss in perspective."

Then, of course, reality sets in.

"It's just too bad the one loss is against Missouri."

Kansas City police spent much of the evening dealing with the usual assortment of fights, property damage and drunks - "team players," emergency personnel call them - but not many more, they said, than during a typical Chiefs game.

The official tally: six arrests (two for property damage, including one seat broken with a fan's kick; one for suspicion of possessing stolen property; and three for disorderly conduct), plus four ejections by security personnel. But more ejections could have been handled by officers elsewhere.

Scott Turner, a pharmacy technician at Kansas University Medical Center, said that he saw one Border War skirmish in which nobody won: A KU fan, "who was obviously intoxicated," had thrown a drink on a Missouri fan.

Escorted out of his section: the KU fan and five MU fans.

"It was awesome," Turner said, only because more people didn't get dragged into the melee.

Turner, in a Kansas sweatshirt, had been enduring plenty of ridicule from a friend during the game: Jesse Drissell, another pharmacy tech, who was siting across the stadium in a Missouri football jersey.

Drissell kept texting - 10, 20, 40 or more times: "scoreboard!"... "No. 1 in the country!"... the expected stuff.

Then, once the game had ended and the crowd had filled the concourses and poured into the parking lots, Drissell received a text message himself. From a pharmacy professor at KU. With a reminder that KU still owns considerable supremacy in at least one major, hardwood department.

Good luck against Oklahoma next week, the professor said. But Sunday is another day.

And KU is pretty good at basketball, too.

The message: "I'm going to watch the Arizona game for some therapy."