Don Fambrough’s warming up his vocal chords. The signs that say it all without technically saying it with vulgarity are popping up all over town. My first Fizzou week.
The best part? It’s a game so important that all that matters is the game. Not its implications on the season. Not who’s starting at quarterback. Not which side of the ball Charles Gordon primarily plays, thus weakening the other. The game. Period. Winning the game. There’s a purity to that.
And what timing.
If ever a football team needed the focus to be on the game, it’s this one. What a welcome side trip from a sorry Big 12 Conference season that has Kansas University off to an 0-4 start in which they have scored 36 points, or nine points a game. Oklahoma State ranks 11th with 64 points in four Big 12 games.
Enough mucking around at the bottom of the statistical data for embarrassing information on the basketball school’s football team. None of that depressing numerology matters at the moment. The focus shifts to Saturday’s game at Memorial Stadium, where the Jayhawks haven’t played a legitimate opponent since last season.
The game overshadows the season because of the series of games between the schools, the animosity, the history. Drawing on that history of animosity becomes part of the way coaches prepare players for the game.
“This is a rivalry that goes all the way back to the Civil War, and we educate our players on the history of this game,” KU coach Mark Mangino understated at Tuesday’s weekly news conference.
Mangino tries his best to camouflage the character within. He’s at his funniest when he refers to talking to his players about something. He says it in such professorial tones at the press gatherings, and you just know he’s letting it fly when addressing his players.
All the Fizzou emotions are being stoked. Whatever it takes. Freshman linebacker Mike Rivera, a Shawnee Mission Northwest product who’s a hard-hitter on any week, might have a little extra mustard on his hits Saturday.
“I have a little thing for Missouri,” Rivera said. “I have a lot of family rooting for Missouri, and I’m at KU, so I’ve got a little thing. A lot of them have been converted, but some of them are still rooting for Missouri because they’ve been Missouri fans their whole life.”
Even his parents?
“My mom and dad love KU now,” he said.
That he even had to say that explains just how deep sentiments can run in this rivalry.
The schools don’t even agree on the series record. Missouri considers the series tied 52-52-9. KU lists the “on-field” record of 53-51-9, counting a 23-7 victory in 1960. KU later was ordered to forfeit that game and a win over Colorado because of an ineligible player.
A win Saturday gives KU the series edge by anybody’s accounting.
“It would mean even more for the people in Kansas than the people in this program,” said California native Jason Swanson, KU’s third first-string quarterback this season. “To come out with three straight victories over Missouri would be a big moral victory for our team and for Lawrence, Kansas.”
Even if the Jayhawks didn’t win another game for the rest of the season, a realistic possibility.
6Sports video: Smith to test KU’s defense (10-25-05)
Swanson showing no rust
2005 Kansas football schedule
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