By Mark Fagan     Nov 25, 2007

Kansas City, Mo. ? Nico Roesler came into Saturday’s game with a pretty good idea about the opposition.

After all, he’d been doing his best Chase Coffman impersonation all week – and his Kansas University teammates had managed to successfully stuff Roesler and his fellow scout team players more often than not.

“We had our moments,” Roesler said, of his turns playing as the Tigers’ star tight end Coffman. “But our team had a good week in practice.”

The walk-on tight end was taking a break Saturday afternoon and revving up just like thousands of other crimson-and-clue faithful: Piling into cars and hitting Interstate 70 for the trek to Arrowhead Stadium for the football Border War battle of Kansas and Missouri.

And, like thousands of others, he got held up at the turnoff for Manchester Trafficway, a place that soon turned into an impromptu spot for sandlot football.

With the Arrowhead lots still a half hour from their scheduled 3 p.m. opening, Roesler and his friends were among the first to squeeze out of their idled cars, break out a football and start the Todd Reesing-to-Marcus-Henry impersonations.

Not quite scout team quality, but the intensity – even on an asphalt off-ramp, four and a half hours before kickoff – was there.

“I’m a great fan, too, at this point,” he said, leaning against a guardrail. “It’s a good, all-around feeling. I’m getting the whole experience, being on the team and watching the whole thing go.”

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Beer man: Like seemingly thousands of others, Will Kane showed up at Saturday’s Border War game at Arrowhead Stadium sporting a bright blue Kansas Jayhawks sweatshirt and carrying the hopes of generations of crimson-and-blue fans with him.

But even before the game, standing in line for the Johnny on the Spot in the parking lot, he knew he’d already won.

Big.

“We’re selling beer,” Kane said, clutching an ice cold original Coors. “Lots and lots of beer.”

Kane, you see, is an on-premise manager for Central States Beverage, a distributor of Coors, Miller, Boulevard and other alcohol products that straddles both sides of the Kansas-Missouri state line.

Line up a pivotal Kansas-Missouri football game for a Saturday night, and then a home Chiefs game for the next day, and you’ve got – well, let’s just say business is good.

“We’re taking over 100 cases to some bars,” Kane said. “These are places that might get five, 10 cases on a normal week.”

Kane is a nephew of John Kane, Central States’ vice president and general manager, and he’s also a cousin of Kevin Kane, a linebacker who was captain of the 2005 Jayhawks that won the Fort Worth Bowl.

That makes these heady times for Will Kane, businessman and fan.

“Weekends like this don’t come along very often,” he said.

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Playing nice: Count Dennis Yoder among the Lawrence residents who wish Saturday’s game wouldn’t have been moved to Kansas City.

No surprise there.

Also count Yoder among the KU faithful finding their counterparts from Missouri not only tolerable, but, perhaps even slightly accommodating.

“It’s been a very amenable group – very courteous,” said Yoder, an administrator in the Perry-Lecompton school district. “It’s been good.”

Again – like many other fans – he still can’t believe that he and his Jayhawks managed to be in this situation: Playing for a No. 1 national ranking, a spot in the Big 12 Championship Game and a chance to dream of a BCS bowl or even the BCS national title game.

“I’ve suffered for many years,” he said. “I saw Bobby Douglass try to throw an orange out of Memorial Stadium in 1968,” the season that led to KU’s last berth in the Orange Bowl.

This, he said, is more fun.

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Seats on high: Brandon McAnderson’s 1-yard touchdown run in the third quarter did more than end Missouri’s shutout and cut into the Tigers’ 21-0 lead.

It also kept Brent True in the stadium.

“I looked over a couple of times,” said True, one of four friends standing in the highest reaches of Arrowhead Stadium: section 341, row 46, seats 1, 2, 3 and 4, where only a short concrete wall separates fans from leaning back and falling. “That score’s kept us in here.”

Just for the record: From these seats in the corner, you can look down on that giant Sprint sign next to the scoreboard (you can see the dirt on top), and look over to the left and see the backs of the stadium lights – the ones pointed down at the field.

True got the tickets from a buddy’s uncle, a season ticket holder at KU, where they normally sit along a 20-yard line, about 10 rows up.

Not this time.

“I wish we would’ve been in Lawrence, at our field,” said Travis Ballard, literally cornered at Arrowhead. “It would’ve been a different story.”