11/24 1:00p One down....
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You know what the best part of Kansas and Missouri having their best ever seasons at the very same time is? The entire nation will get exposed to what is possibly the most bitter and hateful rivalry in the country in all it's glory (or shame, if you prefer). You can have your Ohio State v. Michigan or Alabama v. Auburn, but the last time I checked nobody from Columbus ever went to Ann Arbor and systematically executed every man they could find while burning the town to the ground. And certainly nobody made t-shirts later celebrating that fact.
But that did happen in 1863 in Lawrence, KS when William Quantrill led his band of "Bushwackers" to the "Jayhawker" stronghold and went on a 4 hour rampage that would become known as the "Lawrence Massacre" - one of the ugliest episodes of the brutal 10+ years of fighting along the Kansas and Missouri border. While the Civil War has become the South v. the North in most people's minds, the fighting in fact began as a violent guerrilla conflict between the abolitionists in Kansas and the slave holding Missouri settlers (more or less, like many guerrilla campaigns there were quite blurred lines at times). In many ways, those old wounds have never quite healed - Grandpa Simpson will be be deep in the cold, cold ground before he recognizes Missour-ah as a state, for example.
The New Powers
In College Football
Carry Old Baggage
As Showdown Looms,
Kansas and Missouri Fans
Re-Fight the Civil War
By ADAM THOMPSON
November 20, 2007; Page A1
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- As the universities of Kansas and Missouri prepare to play the most important football game in their 116-year-old rivalry, trash talking is rampant here in a metropolis that straddles both states.
Yet this isn't just the usual back-and-forth about which quarterback or defense is superior. Nor is it centered on the inevitable jokes about how many Kansas (or Missouri) students are needed to change a light bulb. Rather, this trash talking is focused on which state's residents behaved more abominably amid the Civil War.
Fans "go back to the history books and start calling people names for things that started 150 years ago," says Kevin Worley, a Kansas City-based documentary filmmaker who isn't immune to that tendency himself. A die-hard Missouri fan, Mr. Worley suspects that "there's this ancestral hatred of Kansas bred in me" by a lineage traceable to soldiers who marched with Confederate general Jo Shelby.
To most of the nation, the showdown Saturday between second-ranked Kansas and fourth-ranked Missouri will most likely determine which team will play in the national championship game. (To reach that final, the victor Saturday would need to win one subsequent game.)
But to many here on both sides of the state line, the game is merely a proxy for a war that never really ended. Perhaps no other football rivalry in the nation pits against each other states that once fought as brutally as did Kansas and Missouri. Evidence that the feud is ongoing can be seen on the back of Dave Hickerson, a Missouri fan who this weekend chomped a cigar in a Kansas City bar called the Velvet Dog.
He sported a University of Missouri football jersey that bore the name not of Chase Daniel, the team's spectacular quarterback. Rather it said Quantrill. A Missouri hero and Kansas villain, William Quantrill led a Rebel guerrilla unit that in 1863 burned and pillaged Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas, in the process slaughtering about 150 people, including children.
"I don't think there's anything redeeming to be said about [the jersey] except that it" angers Kansans, says Mr. Hickerson.
But Kansans have their own T-shirt that they hope will offend Missourians. The shirt says: "Kansas: Keeping America safe from Missouri since 1854." The shirt features a drawing of abolitionist John Brown, who before his famous raid on Harpers Ferry led murderous raids against farms and families in pro-slavery Missouri. "They're the slave state. We're the Free State. Look who won out in the end," says Heather Knox, a 25-year-old accountant and Kansas alumna who lives in Kansas City, Mo.
cont'd...
ScriptOhio;1004693; said:Who to root for?
The answer is: Which team would Oklahoma be more likely able to beat in the Big 12 Championship game?
It is really a shame that they both can't lose this game.
Thats why I say I'm not from Toledo. OOPs GO Mizzou!BB73;1003708; said:Lou's pep talk to Kansas includes a couple of funny moments.
He says that there are only two times where states in this country went to war: Kansas-Missouri and the tale of Quantrill's raiders shooting many in the streets of Lawrence; and Ohio-Michigan. He says that "history doesn't record who won that war, but we have to assume it was Michigan, since nobody would want Toledo."
Hey, I'm from Toledo, and that was funny.
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