Football team renews rivalry

By Terry Rombeck     Nov 20, 2004

Tigers are from Mars. Jayhawks are from Venus.

Right?

That notion is ingrained into the minds of thousands of Kansans and Missourians as they grow up.

It even got national exposure this week on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” when it was mentioned by Thomas Frank, author of the best-selling “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”

“You learn about this when you grow up there (in Kansas) — that we’re very different from the people of Missouri,” Frank said. “I grew up three blocks from the Missouri border, but we’re very different from them.”

Sit down, proud Kansans.

We have some bad news.

It comes from Bob Nunley, a retired Kansas University faculty member and demographics expert.

“On most numerical measures, Kansas and Missouri are simply not that different,” Nunley said.

“Of course,” he added quickly, “I don’t think any of your readers want to hear that.”

Probably not.

After all, when the KU and University of Missouri football teams face off at 1 p.m. today in Columbia, Mo., they will continue 150 years of rivalry between the two states.

The rivalry traces its roots to the 1850s, when skirmishes — widely known as “border wars” — between the two states marked the beginning of the Civil War.

Kansas¢ 2,723,507 – Population in 2003¢ 25.8% – People, 25 or older, with a bachelor’s degree in 2000¢ 69.2% – Home ownership rate in 2000¢ $20,506 – Per capita monetary income in 1999Missouri¢ 5,700,000 – Population in 2003¢ 21.6% – People, 25 or older, with a bachelor’s degree in 2000¢ 70.3% – Home ownership rate in 2000¢ $19,939 – Per capita monetary income in 1999

Back then, the battle lines were clear. Missourians wanted slavery to be legal. Kansans didn’t.

Today, though, slavery isn’t exactly a timely topic.

Yet the animosity continues. Bottles are thrown at fans and players at football games. KU fans wear “MUCK FIZZOU” shirts with pride. And Missouri fans have adapted their “M-I-Z-Z-O-U” cheer so it berates KU, and it isn’t exactly G-rated.

Dennis Chanay, a KU student senator from Paola, was among those brainwashed by his parents into thinking Missouri was bad. Now, he’s fighting to keep the official name of the KU-MU rivalry as the “Border War” — not the “Border Showdown,” which KU and MU administrators recently began calling the games out of respect to U.S. troops overseas.

Hating Missouri is a KU tradition, he said. Jayhawks love to hate Tigers.

“I’ve always not liked Missouri,” Chanay said. “I can’t even remember the point (when it started). I remember my mom on car trips through Missouri, saying, ‘You can just tell when you’re out of Kansas,’ and we’d say, ‘Yeah.'”

Similar states

So what is it that separates Kansans and Missourians? Nunley suggests it’s not that much.

Consider this census data:

  • 83.1 percent of Kansans are white, compared with 83.8 percent of Missourians.
  • Both states are experiencing moderate population growth that is lower than the national average.
  • The age makeups of the population in each state are nearly identical.
  • Per-capita income is similar, though the average income in Kansas is about $600 a year higher.

Of course, there are differences. Average home values in Missouri are about $6,000 higher. Kansas has a higher percentage of Hispanics; Missouri has a higher percentage of blacks.

A higher percentage of Kansans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, while Missouri has more than twice as much retail sales and manufacturer shipments. And Missouri’s support of President Bush in this month’s election was 8 percentage points lower than Kansas.

Susan Flader, a history professor at MU, said after the Civil War, people from northern states largely settled both Kansas and Missouri. So it’s only logical the states are similar.

But the decade before the Civil War ended was apparently enough to create some deep divides that still exist.

“There definitely was a cultural fault line along the Missouri-Kansas border before the war that became a lasting part of the legacy of each state,” she said.

Quantrill focus

With enough similarities between the two states, Richard Johnson is pretty sure the mutual animosity comes down to events that happened 150 years ago.

The KU dean of students served eight years at MU before moving to Lawrence, so he’s seen the rivalry from both sides.

Simply put, he said, KU students are still mad that Missouri bushwhackers came to Lawrence with William Quantrill and burned much of the city in 1863.

“Ask any student here about Quantrill’s raid, and they know,” Johnson said. “Ask them there (at MU) and they say, ‘Who?’ I had never heard of that until I came here. But people here think it happened 10 years ago.”

Ann Brill, KU’s newly named journalism dean, saw that, too. She worked six years at MU before coming to Mount Oread.

“I was never sure why people in Kansas were so bad,” Brill said. “They were just bad. People in Kansas know why people in Missouri are bad. They burned our town down.”

Wrong side

Of course, there’s a good reason why the people of Missouri today don’t want to bring up those events. It’s a little tough to be righteous when your state supported the cause of slavery.

“We do hear the talk, that the rivalry predates the Civil War,” said Matt Sokoloff, a MU student senator. “I’d assume that’s more on the Kansas campus, that they’d focus more that Kansas was on the correct side and Missouri wasn’t. We know we weren’t on the right side of that.”

The issues may have changed, but the war — or showdown — hasn’t.

When the KU and MU football teams meet today, both sides will have a little extra incentive — like 150 years of history — to win the game at almost any cost. And Jayhawk and Tiger fans probably won’t grab a beer together after the game.

That’s why Don Fambrough isn’t too worried that the official name of the MU-KU rivalry has changed.

Fambrough coached KU in 1971-74 and 1979-82, but today he’s best known as Lawrence’s own Missouri-hater-in-residence. He tells KU football players each fall about the history of the rivalry, and why, in his opinion, Missouri is bad.

The former coach says the name change wasn’t necessary. But he’s pretty sure players won’t be singing “Kumbaya” on the field.

“Anybody that’s played over there knows that playing Missouri is a little bit different than playing anybody else,” Fambrough said. “And I guarantee that we can call it a hoedown, a showdown or whatever the hell they want to, and we aren’t going to be accepted at Columbia, Mo., any different than we have for the last 50 years.”

— Staff writer Jay Senter contributed information to this report.

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