Ever since Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium opened in 1972, speculation has surfaced Kansas University might one day play a football game at the home of the NFL’s Chiefs.
More than three decades later, the Jayhawks still haven’t played a game in Arrowhead.
Nevertheless, with the pragmatic, businesslike Lew Perkins running KU’s athletic department, status quo could go out the window. Moreover, speculation about KU playing at Arrowhead was fueled when Carl Peterson, president and CEO of the Chiefs, sat with KU chancellor Robert Hemenway during Monday night’s Kansas-Binghamton men’s basketball game in Allen Fieldhouse.
Larry Keating, KU senior associate athletic director in charge of scheduling, confirmed Tuesday there had been discussions about the Jayhawks playing either Kansas State or Missouri at Arrowhead Stadium in 2004.
“But,” Keating said, “it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.”
While a Kansas-Missouri game in Arrowhead has seemed a geographic natural, the Tigers and Jayhawks haven’t played in Kansas City since the late 1940s at old Blues Stadium primarily because it takes two to tango in scheduling.
“Kansas has talked about playing there,” Keating said, “but the other side hasn’t followed up.”
Back in 1981, then-KU athletic director Bob Marcum, noting the Jayhawks had seven home games, talked about moving the season finale against Missouri to Arrowhead. Yet the controversial notion was shot down on two fronts.
First, Mizzou officials preferred to play KU in Columbia when it was their turn to host the oldest rivalry west of the Mississippi River and wouldn’t agree to playing in Arrowhead when it was their home game in 1982. Also, traditionalists, who believe all KU home games should be played in Lawrence, lobbied to prevent the switch.
Similar discussions during the late 1980s and 1990s involving Kansas-Missouri football games at Arrowhead were quashed for basically the same reasons.
Still, this is the first time there has been talk about the Jayhawks meeting in-state rival K-State at Arrowhead.
In 2004, it will be KU’s turn to play host to the Sunflower Showdown, but the date is Oct. 9 and it conflicts with NASCAR weekend at Kansas Speedway, meaning hotel room availability would be a sticking point if the Jayhawks and Wildcats were to meet at Arrowhead that weekend.
Next season’s Kansas-Missouri game is scheduled Nov. 20 in Columbia, Mo., so a KU-MU game at Arrowhead in 2004 isn’t in the cards, either.
In the meantime, Keating has some other problems to solve on the 2004 schedule. Foremost, with only 10 games lined up, he has to find an 11th game. NCAA Div. I-A schools, incidentally, can’t play a 12-game schedule again until 2008.
Too, Keating has to come up with a satisfactory date for homecoming.
October is traditionally homecoming month, but the game Oct. 9 with K-State is the only home contest slated that month. Texas Tech had been scheduled Oct. 16, but the Big 12 Conference game with the Red Raiders was shifted to Sept. 25 because KU’s fall break falls on the 16th and university officials prefer no football game be played on fall break weekend.
In addition, homecoming Oct. 9 against K-State would be problematic for the same reason it wouldn’t make sense to move the game to Arrowhead — hotel space. So homecoming, Keating said, probably would have to be Sept. 25 against Tech or Nov. 6 against Colorado.
KU’s other 2004 home games are against Tulsa Sept. 4, Texas Nov. 13 and an undetermined nonconference foe Sept. 11.
