Don Fambrough never has been diplomatic about his disdain for that school located about 160 miles east of here.
Fambrough, the 81-year-old former Kansas University football coach, hates Missouri so much he never wears yellow and black, never eats Frosted Flakes and never goes near tiger pits at zoos.
Man, it’s a good thing Fambrough isn’t coach of KU’s women’s soccer team.
Thirteen of the top 16 seeds in the NCAA soccer tournament landed first-round home games when the 64-team field was announced Monday. Kansas was among the three seeds rejected for a home-field berth because of sub-par facilities. Duke and Colorado were the others.
If you’ve been to SuperTarget Field adjacent to the KU football practice fields, you know the playing surface is OK, but that the facility lacks lights, adequate seating, locker rooms and, most important, rest rooms.
Thus the Jayhawks were pretty much resigned to the fact the NCAA would not award them home-field advantage at the first tournament stop. What they didn’t know, however, was that they would be sent to the home of their geographic rival.
Or as Caroline Smith, the Jayhawks’ sensational sophomore, said: “It kind of sucks.”
Yes, the Jayhawks were assigned to a four-team regional at Missouri, where the Tigers cavort in a splendid new complex, thanks mainly to the benevolence of one of those filthy-rich offspring of Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart.
It would have been worse, of course, if the Jayhawks had been sent to Kansas State, but K-State doesn’t have a women’s soccer program — a fact that only magnifies the Jayhawks’ rivalry with Missouri.
To his credit, Kansas coach Mark Francis didn’t have a hissy fit when he learned his team had been assigned to Columbia.
“If you’re not at home, you want to be close to home,” Francis said, painting a glass-half-full picture. “And we’ve already played there and won.”
Indeed, the Jayhawks posted a 2-0 victory in Columbia, one of 10 shutouts in this school-record 16-win season.
While it goes without saying Francis would love to see improvements at SuperTarget Field, he doesn’t consider himself the voice of advocacy, at least not in public.
“I let other people do that,” he said. “I concentrate on the team. The new administration knows our facilities aren’t up to scratch, and the wheels are already in motion.”
Meanwhile, wheels — bus wheels — will carry the Jayhawks to Columbia for a first-round match Friday with Illinois State. If the Jayhawks win, they’ll remain in Columbia for a Sunday second-round game against the Missouri-Eastern Illinois winner.
Smith, who has shattered school single-season and career scoring records, is doing her best to rationalize the prospect of having to play on the MU campus even though the Jayhawks earned the right to a home assignment.
“We were bummed at first,” Smith said. “But it’s a comfortable environment over there. It’s a pretty facility. It’s close, and we’ve won over there.”
Teammate Stacy Leeper also put a positive spin on the disappointment.
“We had just as many fans as (Missouri) did when we played over there,” Leeper said. “We have lots of family members who travel with us, even when we go to Texas and Oklahoma.”
At least the NCAA didn’t send the Jayhawks to Texas or Oklahoma. In fact, of the three top 16 seeds rejected for home assignments, Kansas was sent closest to home. Colorado has to go all the way to Salt Lake City, and poor Duke must travel to College Station, Texas.
I know how difficult it is to travel from Lawrence to College Station, so I can only imagine how hard it is to reach the home of Texas A&M from Durham, N.C.
Still, neither Duke nor Colorado was sent to the home of an arch-rival, and Kansas was.
