HuskerfaninOkieland
Heisman Trophy Winner
NE Statepaper
by Samuel McKewon
June 24, 2010
Almost as a weed sprouting up through the cracks in an old driveway, the bad-intentioned rivalry between Nebraska and Missouri had emerged and begun to grow.
With its roots in rudeness - that is, Kellen Houstons knockout punch of a celebrating Mizzou student in 2003 and the taunts and accusations of Chase Daniel in 2007 and 2008 - the game charted a course for NU/Colorado, circa 1990s, when the Buffaloes awakened for a brief, spectacular era before crawling into their current fetal state.
Then the Cornhuskers and Tigers squared off for the prize Missouri wanted - and expected - most: A call-up to the Big Ten. When Nebraska claimed that crown, poof went the bubbling bad blood.
Its hard to hate what you must, to some extent, pity.
How close was Mizzou to becoming Nebraskas Big 12 brother in the Big Ten? Probably as close as Texas was to hopping to the Pac-10. Had that domino tipped, the Tigers were well-positioned for a second wave of Big Ten invitations. But Texas A&M flashed its SEC card, UT got its golden deal and both - plus Oklahoma - extracted a pound of flesh from the Tigers, among other Big 12 North programs, in the process.
Life just became harder for Missouri in nearly every way. Thats true of every Big 12 North school staying behind - but especially so for Mizzou, which roused itself from a football coma seven years ago, and seemed poised, with a new arena and flashy recruits, to finally challenge Kansas for basketball supremacy.
Mike Andersons basketball program should proceed unfettered - although the Big 12 may be so difficult it wears out the teams in it - but Gary Pinkel must now confront the reality that, starting in 2011, there is no division crown to claim. No Big 12 Championship game for exposure. Itll now be nine games - six of which will be waged against teams with comparable or superior athletes to his own team.
Mizzou fans are a fickle lot anyway; how will they embrace the prospect of a third-place finish being an achievement? I know how Nebraska fans, who are not particularly fickle, would embrace it: With ever-growing rage. Missouri faithful may perhaps shrug and wait for basketball season.
For decades, thats what Kansas and Kansas State did, until Bill Snyder arrived in Manhattan and embarked on this funny thing called a winning season. Snyders job is much harder now - he cant just go out and nab a five-star JUCO quarterback - and KUs Turner Gill will fight against the same negative, unspoken energy: When does hoops season begin?
But Missouri always had a greater potential in football, with solid talent in Kansas City and St. Louis, and it seemed like the Big 12 North was the perfect place to work out the kinks. Nebraska was the perfect rival. The culture of the two states are starkly different, for one thing - especially the farther you travel south or east in Show-Me country - and NU stumbled around enough during the Callahan era to open the door wide for the Tigers to waltz in. It takes a certain kind of arrogance, after all, to rebuff a talent like Jeremy Maclin when youve already landed one of his best friends in Mike McNeill.
The 41-6 backyard beatdown Mizzou delivered on Nebraska in 2007 - its still the most complete, humiliating loss of that year, because NU played hard and simply got stoned - was exacerbated by the 52-17 thumping Missouri delivered one year later in Lincoln, when it appeared on a crash course for the national title. NUs secret defensive plan gone horribly awry, Daniels accusation that Ndamukong Suh spit on him during warm-ups, the personal fouls, the chatter. The 2009 game, waged in a driving, unceasing rainstorm, seemed almost apocryphal, the storm having knocked out the Tigers video boards, leaving the roar and silence of a wet, wild crowd as the primary signals of success or failure. NUs fourth-quarter comeback will remain one of the most pivotal games of Bo Pelinis Husker career. And Missouri fans are not likely to soon forget Suh because of it.
Yes, something was growing between the two programs, and though its fun to poke at Missouri, that something had substance, however rooted it was in an ill, blue mood. The venerable Kansas City and St. Louis media rose to the occasion of the last three games, pumping out commentaries and interviews. The ongoing Gabbert drama - quarterbacks Blaine and Tyler committed to NU, then backed out to play for Missouri - created a different kind of tension. Pinkel, making the state rounds in a helicopter. Pelini, standing like a general in the Missouri rain.
I cant help but think it made both programs a little better.
The most decisive battle, strangely, was fought in academia, as Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman - a deft, bold leader - orchestrated an invite for NU that somehow left Missouri - always considered the Harvard of the Plains, an academic darling with freshly-mowed grounds and Greek houses the size of a small European nation - waiting for a proposal.
It was a battle Mizzou, giving its standing, should have aced. Indeed, one its officials - athletic director Mike Alden and chancellor Brady Deaton - thought it had aced, based on its comments to the news media. As it pertained to the Big 12, Alden was the king of candid, as evidenced in a lengthy interview he granted to the Columbia Tribune right after Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany announced his intention to explore expansion.
The Mizzou media - an impressive and accomplished group of local and national sports journalists who graduated from Missouri - pushed the expansion story until a certain reporter from Texas started carrying the Longhorns water.
It seemed a done deal until the day it wasnt, when the Big Ten settled on, for the interim, one team, and it wasnt cosmopolitan Mizzou, but Nebraska, a school that had quietly, but vastly, improved itself since Perlman took over.
Did Missouri talk too much? Did Perlmans connections and visibility with the NCAA and BCS seal the deal? Was it Barry Alvarez, a Bob Devaney pupil and one of the last great Big Ten coaches? Wisconsin sure seems happy to see NU in the league, doesnt it? Like its been waiting two decades for it to happen.
I wonder if Missouri ever gets a good answer to that question. I doubt it. The Big Ten, for all its strengths, is mercurial and imperial. So let Nebraskas inclusion be written, so let NUs growing rivalry with Mizzou be done.
by Samuel McKewon
June 24, 2010
Almost as a weed sprouting up through the cracks in an old driveway, the bad-intentioned rivalry between Nebraska and Missouri had emerged and begun to grow.
With its roots in rudeness - that is, Kellen Houstons knockout punch of a celebrating Mizzou student in 2003 and the taunts and accusations of Chase Daniel in 2007 and 2008 - the game charted a course for NU/Colorado, circa 1990s, when the Buffaloes awakened for a brief, spectacular era before crawling into their current fetal state.
Then the Cornhuskers and Tigers squared off for the prize Missouri wanted - and expected - most: A call-up to the Big Ten. When Nebraska claimed that crown, poof went the bubbling bad blood.
Its hard to hate what you must, to some extent, pity.
How close was Mizzou to becoming Nebraskas Big 12 brother in the Big Ten? Probably as close as Texas was to hopping to the Pac-10. Had that domino tipped, the Tigers were well-positioned for a second wave of Big Ten invitations. But Texas A&M flashed its SEC card, UT got its golden deal and both - plus Oklahoma - extracted a pound of flesh from the Tigers, among other Big 12 North programs, in the process.
Life just became harder for Missouri in nearly every way. Thats true of every Big 12 North school staying behind - but especially so for Mizzou, which roused itself from a football coma seven years ago, and seemed poised, with a new arena and flashy recruits, to finally challenge Kansas for basketball supremacy.
Mike Andersons basketball program should proceed unfettered - although the Big 12 may be so difficult it wears out the teams in it - but Gary Pinkel must now confront the reality that, starting in 2011, there is no division crown to claim. No Big 12 Championship game for exposure. Itll now be nine games - six of which will be waged against teams with comparable or superior athletes to his own team.
Mizzou fans are a fickle lot anyway; how will they embrace the prospect of a third-place finish being an achievement? I know how Nebraska fans, who are not particularly fickle, would embrace it: With ever-growing rage. Missouri faithful may perhaps shrug and wait for basketball season.
For decades, thats what Kansas and Kansas State did, until Bill Snyder arrived in Manhattan and embarked on this funny thing called a winning season. Snyders job is much harder now - he cant just go out and nab a five-star JUCO quarterback - and KUs Turner Gill will fight against the same negative, unspoken energy: When does hoops season begin?
But Missouri always had a greater potential in football, with solid talent in Kansas City and St. Louis, and it seemed like the Big 12 North was the perfect place to work out the kinks. Nebraska was the perfect rival. The culture of the two states are starkly different, for one thing - especially the farther you travel south or east in Show-Me country - and NU stumbled around enough during the Callahan era to open the door wide for the Tigers to waltz in. It takes a certain kind of arrogance, after all, to rebuff a talent like Jeremy Maclin when youve already landed one of his best friends in Mike McNeill.
The 41-6 backyard beatdown Mizzou delivered on Nebraska in 2007 - its still the most complete, humiliating loss of that year, because NU played hard and simply got stoned - was exacerbated by the 52-17 thumping Missouri delivered one year later in Lincoln, when it appeared on a crash course for the national title. NUs secret defensive plan gone horribly awry, Daniels accusation that Ndamukong Suh spit on him during warm-ups, the personal fouls, the chatter. The 2009 game, waged in a driving, unceasing rainstorm, seemed almost apocryphal, the storm having knocked out the Tigers video boards, leaving the roar and silence of a wet, wild crowd as the primary signals of success or failure. NUs fourth-quarter comeback will remain one of the most pivotal games of Bo Pelinis Husker career. And Missouri fans are not likely to soon forget Suh because of it.
Yes, something was growing between the two programs, and though its fun to poke at Missouri, that something had substance, however rooted it was in an ill, blue mood. The venerable Kansas City and St. Louis media rose to the occasion of the last three games, pumping out commentaries and interviews. The ongoing Gabbert drama - quarterbacks Blaine and Tyler committed to NU, then backed out to play for Missouri - created a different kind of tension. Pinkel, making the state rounds in a helicopter. Pelini, standing like a general in the Missouri rain.
I cant help but think it made both programs a little better.
The most decisive battle, strangely, was fought in academia, as Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman - a deft, bold leader - orchestrated an invite for NU that somehow left Missouri - always considered the Harvard of the Plains, an academic darling with freshly-mowed grounds and Greek houses the size of a small European nation - waiting for a proposal.
It was a battle Mizzou, giving its standing, should have aced. Indeed, one its officials - athletic director Mike Alden and chancellor Brady Deaton - thought it had aced, based on its comments to the news media. As it pertained to the Big 12, Alden was the king of candid, as evidenced in a lengthy interview he granted to the Columbia Tribune right after Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany announced his intention to explore expansion.
The Mizzou media - an impressive and accomplished group of local and national sports journalists who graduated from Missouri - pushed the expansion story until a certain reporter from Texas started carrying the Longhorns water.
It seemed a done deal until the day it wasnt, when the Big Ten settled on, for the interim, one team, and it wasnt cosmopolitan Mizzou, but Nebraska, a school that had quietly, but vastly, improved itself since Perlman took over.
Did Missouri talk too much? Did Perlmans connections and visibility with the NCAA and BCS seal the deal? Was it Barry Alvarez, a Bob Devaney pupil and one of the last great Big Ten coaches? Wisconsin sure seems happy to see NU in the league, doesnt it? Like its been waiting two decades for it to happen.
I wonder if Missouri ever gets a good answer to that question. I doubt it. The Big Ten, for all its strengths, is mercurial and imperial. So let Nebraskas inclusion be written, so let NUs growing rivalry with Mizzou be done.
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