Lawrence / KU

[Blackshirt]

Article Published: Monday, September 29, 2003

big 12 football

Civility becomes casualty

 

Kansas-Missouri rude awakening

 

By Bill Briggs

Denver Post Sports Writer

 

LAWRENCE, Kan. - The Civil War still lives in the thin aisle dividing sections 45 and 46.

 

You think I'm joking.

 

On the left, trying not to notice the salty spray of anti-Missouri F-bombs hurled in their direction, a mini-mob of Tigers fans squirmed in their corner-stadium seats. They grit their teeth beneath black ballcaps.

 

To their immediate right, crammed into an airtight but well-oiled mass, much of the University of Kansas student body weaved in the Indian summer sunshine. The only thing bluer than their Jayhawks T-shirts was their language.

 

Black and blue. Let's hope not.

 

"Rock chalk chicken hawk!" growled Missouri student Ben, butchering the famous Kansas chant. He was annoyed because someone swiped the Tigers flag he and four dorm buddies affixed to their car Friday night before road-tripping from Columbia, Mo.

 

"Missouri fans wear blue jean shorts!" a KU kid hollered through cupped hands, zinging the Show Me State's southern roots.

 

This was stop No. 3 on The Denver Post's tour of Big 12 football venues. Each Saturday, I sport the visiting team's colors to test the home fans' warmth. And the sold- out house at Memorial Stadium gave me the hardest dose to date of nose-to-nose intensity - not to mention an elbow to my spinal column.

 

They call this game the "Border War." And while many folks in Colorado or California may consider Missouri and Kansas interchangeable prairie territories, natives of each cringe when they have to cross the state line.

 

Heck, Kansas won't even send its marching band to Missouri games anymore because Tigers fans dented the tubas by pelting them with beer bottles. More tragic: Some of the bottles were still full. They've now met 112 times - the second most-played college series in the country. Going into Saturday, the record was a bit tight: 51-51-9.

 

"This isn't a rivalry. This is war," former Kansas football coach Don Fambrough said. "I've known some real nice people to move to Missouri and in one week's time, they're just the biggest nothings you've ever seen. I always thought maybe they gave them an inoculation of meanness at the border."

 

Former KU quarterback John Hadl recalls a postgame skirmish in the streets of Columbia in the early 1960s while he drove three passengers back to Kansas. At a stoplight, a carload of Missouri students began firing obscene gestures at Hadl and his buddies. What the Tigers fans didn't know: Hadl had his entire backfield in the back seat, including 212-pound human biceps Curtis McClinton.

 

"Soon as Clinton jumped out, you should have seen their eyeballs. They threw it in low and peeled out," Hadl said. "We don't like them and they don't like us."

 

That mutual dislike, apparently passed on for generations, stretches back to the Civil War.

 

People in Missouri, which was part of the Confederacy, still talk about the band of Kansas rangers who, trumpeting the cause of anti- slavery, burned and plundered a string of Missouri towns in the early 1860s, killing hundreds of people in their wake. They were dubbed the "jayhawkers."

 

Folks in Kansas still talk about William Quantrill, a confederate captain who assembled a group of Missouri guerrillas, mostly farmers, to retaliate for the jayhawker attacks. On Aug. 23, 1863, Quantrill led his 300 followers in a brutal attack on Lawrence, burning tall buildings and killing between 150 and 200 of the town's men.

 

"Our hatred goes back 150 years. It is born of bloodshed and fundamental differences that have never been resolved," Brad Burgess wrote on a Missouri fan message board days before the game. "I really dislike Kansas. No, I hate Kansas."

 

Walking through the hilly Kansas campus - wearing a black Missouri sweat shirt with gold lettering - the taunts from Jayhawks students were fairly direct: "Go home!" "Get bent!"

 

Several KU students in "Win Or Lose We'll Still Booze" shirts took their slogan to new lengths and shouted lusty "boos" 3 inches from my ear.

 

Two KU cheerleaders smiled beneath blue hair bows and then barked: "Missouri blows!" Even the band heckled me, howling: "Get off our campus!" as I walked by their warm-up spot outside an academic building.

 

One young Jayhawker, with his hat turned sideways, spotted me about a quarter-mile from Memorial Stadium. "I want YOU after the game!" he screamed.

 

On the stadium's south side, one KU tailgater, Anthony Francisco, even showed up in shoulder pads.

 

"Yeah, we've had a lot of good trash-talking with Missouri fans today," said Francisco, a senior business major. "It's a house divided."

 

That house - about 80 percent in home blue - erupted when Kansas scored first and led 7-0. The home fans extended their arms as if to signal touchdown, then began waving them wildly above their heads, back and forth. This is called "waving the wheat," which gives the impression of a breezy Kansas farm field.

 

When Kansas scored again, and led 21-14, some fans broke out their "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" chant. This was invented in 1886 by KU chemistry professor F.H.S. Bailey after returning from a convention in Wichita. The rhythmic clicks of the train gave him the cadence.

 

Away from the swearing and chanting, several hundred KU and Missouri fans watched peacefully and for free on Campanile Hill, a grassy slope overlooking the field. The back of the end-zone scoreboard blocks much of the game, but the hill provided a serene atmosphere with families snuggling on blankets and groups of young boys tossing footballs.

 

Back in the fan trenches, how- ever, the aisle between sections 45 and 46 was filling fast with KU students lining up to rush the field below. As Missouri fans sat silent, the jumping Jayhawks students blasted them with chants of "overrated" and "get out now." Some waved goodbye with Tigers jerseys. And when Kansas bumped its lead to 35-14, the students thundered downward toward the field - and three terrified-looking security guards in yellow jackets.

 

One KU kid slammed an elbow into my back, which caused me to fall into the woman in front, which sparked a human domino effect of sad Missourians. The Kansas students swarmed the field after game's final second. It took them just three minutes to bring down the south goalpost and even less time to drop the north.

 

Like ants lugging leaves, small groups of students hoisted separate chunks of the yellow uprights and began jogging out of the stadium in a thick throng. They were headed up Campanile Hill and then to nearby Potter Lake where the posts would get a good dunking.

 

"If you are carrying a piece of the north goalpost," the stadium announcer pleaded, "we suggest you walk, not run."

 

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1663459,00.html