Give ‘em truth serum, and more than a few Missouri fans would say they wish the old Big 12 — the one that included Nebraska and Oklahoma — remained intact and that the Tigers were still a member. Find fans of a certain age, and they’ll sing ballads of the Big Eight, which didn’t include any Texas schools.
Give ’em truth serum, and those Tigers faithful will say they still detest Kansas more than any SEC foe.
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Don’t confuse that with me saying Missouri made a mistake by joining the SEC. It didn’t. That move ensured the Tigers would emerge on the right side of conference realignment, and they’ve enjoyed some fruits of the SEC’s riches. There have been on-field highlights, too, including two SEC Championship Game appearances during the Gary Pinkel era, and 21 victories the past two seasons under Eliah Drinkwitz.
Missouri, in most years, holds its own in the SEC.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The Tigers left behind all of their best rivalries when they departed the Big 12. No rivalry was bigger than the Border War against Kansas.
That rivalry, dormant since the last meeting in 2011, will renew as a non-conference clash on Sept. 6 in Columbia.
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When Lance Leipold became Kansas’ coach before the 2021 season, he didn’t fully grasp the significance of a bitter rivalry that derived its name from the bloody years of fighting between pro- and anti-slavery factions along the Kansas-Missouri border in the years leading up to the Civil War.
Leipold has a better understanding of the rivalry now, and it’s fair to call this the biggest game on either team’s schedule — bigger than any Big 12 game the Jayhawks will play, or any SEC clash Missouri will face.
“I didn’t really realize when I first got to Lawrence that the Kansas-Missouri game is more of a rivalry than Kansas-Kansas State,” Leipold said during Big 12 media days on July 9.
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Indeed. Kansas State has beaten the Jayhawks 16 straight times, but Missouri owns a razor-thin advantage in the Border War.
Missouri also touted rivalries with Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa State from its Big Eight days, but none trumped Kansas.
“Rivalry games are what makes college football so special,” Leipold said.
Accurate, and it’s inexcusable that it took so long to restore this rivalry, but at least it’s here for 2025 and ’26.
Scott Dochterman of The Athletic recently ranked Kansas-Missouri as the 19th-best rivalry in all of college football. If you think that’s a crock, you never lived in the Midwest, and you certainly didn’t live there in 2007.
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Missouri and Kansas were both rocking and rolling that year, and although LSU won the national championship, the Big 12 was home to the nation’s most entertaining football. At the time, I was in college at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, and I wore out some VHS tapes recording Saturday Big 12 games and watching them when I returned to my dorm room after first covering Truman’s game for the student newspaper.
The Big 12 teemed with a batch of impressive quarterbacks, including Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell, Texas’ Colt McCoy, Kansas State’s Josh Freeman and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford.
Missouri and Kansas boasted two of the best. Chase Daniel’s fourth-place finish in the Heisman Trophy voting remains the highest for a Missouri player since World War II. Kansas countered with Todd Reesing.
When the rivals met in late November, Kansas was ranked No. 2 in the conference; Missouri was No. 4.
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Daniel completed 40 – yes, 40 – passes, and the Tigers toppled Kansas 36-28 at Arrowhead Stadium in front of a crowd of 80,537 that exceeded the listed capacity. Missouri climbed to No. 1 in the BCS rankings.
For Missouri fans, the less said, the better, about what happened against Oklahoma the following week in the Big 12 Championship.
But history won’t erase what happened the prior Saturday, when “College GameDay” rolled into Kansas City, a city that fittingly spills on to either side of the border, to showcase a fierce rivalry that thankfully will renew this season, while Missouri wears an SEC uniform patch that still looks a bit out of place.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Missouri vs. Kansas college football rivalry return is ‘special’
