Preliminary plans for a Kansas-Missouri football game at Arrowhead Stadium have been scrapped.
KU athletics director Bob Frederick had looked at shifting the Jayhawks’ scheduled home game on Oct. 20 against the Tigers to Kansas City, Mo., as a potential revenue enhancer.
3/05/01:KU abolishes men’s tennis, swimming3/05/01:Kansas coaches, athletes disappointed by cuts3/05/01:KU punts Arrowhead game plan
“Ultimately, we decided it was something we didn’t want to do,” Frederick said Sunday. “Moving the game to Arrowhead would have only been a one-year solution. Then we’d be talking about second-year problems.”
Frederick made the announcement in conjunction with Sunday’s Kansas University Athletic Corp. board meeting at which it was decided to drop men’s swimming and men’s tennis and to devise a donor seating plan for men’s basketball games in Allen Fieldhouse.
Once Frederick hoisted the Arrowhead flag about a month ago, he was peppered with criticism from traditionalists who believe college football games should be played on campus and from others who thought moving the game from Lawrence would take away KU’s homefield advantage
“It generated negative comment by a lot of people,” Frederick said, “so it’s something we decided we didn’t need to do.”
Thus Kansas will have a seven-game home football schedule this fall.
The Jayhawks will open with three consuctive games in Memorial Stadium, starting with Southwest Missouri State, an NCAA Div. I-AA school, on Sept. 1. UCLA will follow on Sept. 8 and Wyoming on Sept. 15.
Kansas will play at Colorado on Sept. 22 and at Texas Tech on Oct. 6. KU will be idle on Sept. 29. That’s the weekend of the first Winston Cup race at the new Kansas Motor Speedway in Kansas City.
KU officials have designated the Oct. 13 game against defending national champion Oklahoma as Homecoming. Other home games will be against Missouri on Oct. 20, Nebraska on Nov. 3 and Iowa State on Nov. 17.
Because of television possibilities, the only kickoffs set in stone are for Southwest Missouri State and Wyoming. Both will start at 6 p.m.
