For the first time in 14 years, Kansas and Missouri are meeting for a football game. On Saturday at Faurot Field, they will renew a rivalry that dates back to 1891 on the gridiron, and four decades earlier in terms of material cross-border political violence between anti- and pro-slavery factions ahead of the Civil War.
It will be the first matchup of the Border War adversaries in football since Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012. The Tigers won the last matchup, a 24-10 victory at Arrowhead Stadium on Nov. 26, 2011, which gave MU a 56-55-9 lead in the all-time series (depending on whom you ask; Missouri claims a 57-54-9 lead based on a disputed result in 1960).
By then, the bitter rivalry had already passed what was arguably its modern peak, in the final years of Mark Mangino’s tenure as KU’s coach.
Most famous was the 2007 matchup in which No. 4 Missouri ended No. 2 KU’s unbeaten season at Arrowhead Stadium with a 36-28 result, with the Tigers’ quarterback Chase Daniel going 40-for-49 for 361 yards with three touchdowns, as the Jayhawks’ fourth-quarter comeback attempt ran out of time. Missouri spent a week at No. 1 in the nation, fell flat in a loss to Oklahoma, and ended up winning the Cotton Bowl, while KU took down Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl for one of the most fondly remembered victories in program history.
In 2008, amid a season that was less successful overall after a series of losses to high-ranked teams midway through the year, KU got a measure of revenge against then-No. 12 MU. Kerry Meier caught 14 passes for 106 yards, including the game-winning touchdown from Todd Reesing on fourth-and-7 with 27 seconds remaining, and Philip Strozier blocked Jeff Wolfert’s attempt at a 54-yard game-winning field goal to give the Jayhawks a 40-37 victory. Reesing and Daniel threw for four scores each on a snowy day at Arrowhead, while KU’s Darrell Stuckey intercepted two of Daniel’s passes and forced and recovered a fumble.
The following year, Reesing’s last, brought another dramatic edition of the rivalry, but one that functioned as the final indignity for the Jayhawks amid a seven-game losing streak to conclude the 2009 season (after a 5-0 start that brought them as high as No. 16 in the polls), which prevented KU from reaching a third straight bowl game. Reesing set the Jayhawks’ single-game passing record (which stood until the 2022 Liberty Bowl) with 498 yards, including 242 to Dezmon Briscoe, but with KU nursing a three-point lead with less than three minutes to go, he was sacked for a safety. The Tigers then marched down the field for a last-second field goal to win 41-39.
KU missed the postseason and Mangino resigned after the season amid allegations he mistreated players. The last two rivalry contests took place in the first two years of a 12-season stretch in which the Jayhawks won a total of 23 games. In 2010, KU managed just 141 yards of total offense against MU and lost 35-7; in the final edition of the matchup (until Saturday), the Jayhawks only got 137. They actually led 10-0 on a pick-6 by Bradley McDougald in the second quarter and proceeded to go punt, punt, fumble, punt, punt, interception for the rest of the game, which resulted in a 24-10 loss.
“I think, without question, this thing can continue if both schools decide they want to,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said afterward. “It’s not real complex, I don’t think. Make it work. We’re certainly willing to do that, and you’d like to keep this rivalry going. Hopefully, people get together, and they do what’s right. I feel that can happen.”
But in fact, university officials evidently didn’t have much interest in perpetuating the rivalry after Missouri left the league, because it lay dormant for the better part of a decade, outside of scattered nonconference matchups in sports like softball and volleyball. After a charity exhibition game in 2017, the schools’ men’s basketball teams resumed their rivalry series in 2021. The women’s basketball programs met in the 2023 WNIT (and will play a neutral-site game in Kansas City, Missouri, this November).
For football in particular, the resumption of the rivalry has been a long time coming. The matchup known officially as the Border Showdown may truly be a war in the minds of fans and players on either side, but for the last 14 years it has functioned as a cold war. Many words were exchanged — across a variety of sports, in a variety of media — and no on-field blows.
For instance:
— Two years after Missouri’s departure from the SEC, in a Google+ Hangout on his personal website (it was 2014, after all), Pinkel said there was an “open invitation” for KU to play them again, but, he added, “There’s some pouting going on still.” Around the same time, a Missouri softball player, Corrin Genovese, said ahead of a postseason matchup with KU that the Jayhawks were “kind of scared to play us in football and basketball.”
— Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., an Overland Park native who went to Missouri, posted on social media during his campaign as a Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2016 that he would “broker a deal to reinstate the Border War.”
— In June 2017, former Missouri chancellor R. Bowen Loftin told AL.com that KU men’s basketball coach Bill Self was responsible for the fact that the rivalry hadn’t returned when KU and MU had “a lucrative offer on the table for the Border War to restart in Arrowhead Stadium,” as reporter John Talty wrote. Self told the Journal-World at the time: “Tell the ex-Missouri chancellor I coach basketball, not football, and that we would never play a game in Arrowhead or even discuss it. It’s too cold. We play our games indoors. But I look forward to meeting him someday if he’s ever in Lawrence.” KU’s then-AD Sheahon Zenger said the status of the rivalry was an “institutional decision.”
— Zenger’s successor, Jeff Long, said shortly before the start of his tenure in July 2018, that engaging in discussions about resuming the rivalry was not a high priority: “I have to learn, from the Kansas perspective, the view of that rivalry. I would never make a decision about something as important and critical, in my mind, before I got to know the University of Kansas Jayhawk athletics type of perspective.”
Finally, KU announced the return of the basketball rivalry in October 2019, with Self saying that the interest of the 2017 charity exhibition had exceeded his expectations and the time was right for the teams to meet again.
“We have quietly sought input from fans and supporters on the renewal of this series and we believe the overriding sentiments are that this historic rivalry should resume,” Long said at the time. “While this series does not include each of our sports teams competing in the Border Showdown at this stage, we feel this is the first step to expanding it in the future.”
Then the news came seven months later that the football teams would play what was then a far-off four-game series in 2025, 2026, 2031 and 2032, beginning on Sept. 6, 2025, in Columbia, Missouri.
The announcement of the matchups predates current KU football coach Lance Leipold, but he has spoken recently about his process of learning more about the Border War after he was appointed in the spring of 2021.
“When I first took the job I didn’t really realize it, and even as you have an in-state rival in Kansas State who has an excellent program, and then you find out that really, there’s more people that have a displeasure for the team across state lines in Missouri than they did for the in-state school,” Leipold said in a recent appearance on “The Jim Rome Show.”
This week’s matchup has come up in discussions only occasionally in the years since. Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz looked into a TV camera from KSHB a few weeks after Leipold was hired and said, “See you in 2025, man.” Later, in 2022, college football reporter Brett McMurphy reported that the Tigers didn’t want to face the Jayhawks in a bowl game, which Missouri denied. (KU ended up playing against Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl, while Missouri faced Wake Forest in the Gasparilla Bowl.)
Now, it’s game week, and so soon, talking will give way to actual football. Saturday’s game in Columbia, set for 2:30 p.m. on ESPN2, will be the first edition of the Border War (or Showdown) contested on either school’s campus since 2006.
“I know it’s a game that’s a lot at stake, but after that game is over next week, no matter what the outcome may be — and I know we’ll have our team ready to play — but we have to play nine more games after that,” Leipold said after KU beat Wagner on Friday. “So there’s a lot there that has to be balanced as you approach games like this, but I know it’s something that people have been waiting for for a long time, and it should be exciting.”
Kansas University offensive lineman Anthony Collins collects himself in the second half. After finding themselves in a 21-0 hole, the Jayhawks rallied, but ultimately fell short of Missouri, 36-28, on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.
Kansas receiver Kerry Meier flashes a smile as he runs in what proved to be the winning touchdown against Missouri late in the fourth quarter Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008 at Arrowhead Stadium.
Kansas linebacker Joe Mortensen (8) and defensive tackle Richard Johnson Jr. hoist the traveling war drum trophy following the Jayhawks 40-37 victory over rival Missouri, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008 at Arrowhead Stadium.
A field goal by Missouri kicker Grant Ressel clears the Jayhawks’ defense to win the game for the Tigers, 41-39, as time expires, Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009 at Arrowhead Stadium.
Thad Allender
Nick Krug
Nick Krug
Nick Krug