You know how you can tell that people care about something? When they tell you how much they don't care. I mean, this isn't your every day, take it or leave it, I'm fine either way not caring. They don't care so much that they are going to by God tell you how much they don't care.
There's a lot of that going on this week here in our little 165-mile stretch of Interstate-70 between Columbia, MO and Lawrence, KS.
Now, I'll allow that there are some people who probably truly don't care that Missouri and Kansas are playing an exhibition game this Sunday in Kansas City. But I think there are a whole lot more who do...no matter what they say.
This whole thing started about seven years ago when conference realignment became a thing. (Well, I mean, the WHOLE thing started about 160 years ago over which side of the Civil War you were on and people from one state murdering people from another and then a group of people going to the other town and burning it to the ground, but the "I don't care if I never see you again" part started around 2010).
Anyway, around that time, Missouri started having wandering eyes because Texas was taking a Bevo-sized dump on every other team in the Big 12 Conference on a regular basis and the Tigers wanted to reside in a place where there was a little less cow crap all over the yard. That place ended up being the Southeastern Conference and when Missouri went there, everyone in Lawrence--led by Bill Self, who by nature of being the basketball coach at the University of Kansas is the leader of everything--very publicly took their ball and went home and wouldn't play sports with people from Mizzou anymore.
So late last week the two schools announced that they would renew acquaintances and stoop to share a basketball court again in order to be able to donate a couple of million dollars to hurricane relief efforts. The Border Scrimmage became an official thing last Friday. And that's when everybody started telling us how much they didn't care again.
So, look, if you're one of those people that really doesn't care, that's fine. I'm not going to convince you otherwise and I'm really not trying. Honestly, if you're one of those people, you probably haven't gotten this far anyway.
But I care. And so do a lot of other people.
See, I grew up in Kansas City. It's in Missouri, but there are a whole lot of Kansas basketball fans there (I would say there are a whole lot of Kansas fans, but really there are only Kansas basketball fans because many of them will tell you they are also Nebraska or Kansas State football fans or that they just don't care about college football, which has always kind of cracked me up, but that's another thing we can talk about some other time). Kansas City is ground zero for this whole Border War because, well, that's where the border is. There is a Kansas City, Missouri and a Kansas City, Kansas. If you talk to someone who is from any of the other 48 states in this fine country and you tell them you are from Kansas City, many of them just kind of assume you are from Kansas. Those people are stupid.
So I grew up in Kansas City and I was raised on this rivalry. My great great grandmother grew up on a farm in southwest Missouri where Jayhawkers came and threatened her family only to be thwarted by the James brothers (yes, THOSE James brothers). My grandmother wrote her doctoral thesis many years later on that conflict. There was a poster in the office of a certain family member of mine growing up that read: "Q. Why do trees in Missouri lean to the West? A. Because Kansas sucks."
I went to the Final Four practices at Kemper Arena in 1988 and I cheered like hell for Oklahoma, in part because I liked Billy Tubbs and loved Mookie Blaylock and Stacey King and at that point in time was an 11-year old who saw myself going to school in Norman (also largely because when you grew up in Big Eight country during that time, you had your team and then you either liked Nebraska or Oklahoma since they were the only two teams that had a chance to win the league and I sided with Barry Switzer, Keith Jackson and Jamelle Holieway). But mostly I cheered for the Sooners because they were playing Kansas. A Google search tells me Oklahoma did not win that Final Four, but I have blocked all memory of that Monday night from my mind, so I'm just going to trust the Internet that some truck driver's son named Danny pulled off what many called a miracle.
The next year, those two teams and Mizzou traded the No. 1 ranking back and forth all season long. None of them made the Final Four, but it was one of the most exciting regular seasons of my lifetime.
I was raised on Lee Coward at the buzzer (twice), Anthony Peeler scoring 43 in a loss in Lawrence and much more. When I was in college I saw Corey Tate sink the Jayhawks in double overtime and sat in the student section at Allen Fieldhouse (considering my audience I hesitate to say this, but it really is a fantastic place to watch a college basketball game, especially when the other team is Missouri). I've been fortunate enough to be in the building to see David Padgett shut down the Hearnes Center with a buzzer beater, Christian Moody channel his inner Kiwane Garris at the end of regulation, Marcus Denmon stage a one-man comeback and Thomas Robinson (not) foul Phil Pressey and so many more memorable moments.
When you do what I do for a living, you can't really be a fan. And honestly, it's not been that hard for me. Over time, it's work and you get rid of most of the emotional attachments and outbursts that make fandom what it is. But there's one exception. I still root for whoever plays Kansas in basketball. That's in my blood.
I refused to move during the second half when Bucknell beat them because I was pretty sure if I did it was going to change the outcome. There was a time in my life Ali Faroukmanesh was my favorite person on the planet. Same for Hakim Warrick. I refused to watch the 2012 national championship game between Kansas and Kentucky. I grew up a little bit that night. Yes, I was 35 years old, but it was the first time I consciously decided "Nothing that happens tonight is going to give me anything more than a slight sense of relief. So why do I need to put myself through that?" And I didn't know who won until the next morning.
So you want to know why I care? Because we are now at a point where Missouri and Kansas fans aren't going to know what those feelings are like. Students at the schools have never seen the teams play when they've been students. None of the players in Sunday's game have ever played the other team. If you're under 20, the Border War is a thing you've heard about and can look up on YouTube, but it's nothing you've ever experienced. You might root against the other team because that's what you've been told you are supposed to do, but you don't feel it. You don't hate them. You don't know.
The SEC was the right move for Missouri, there's no question. And Kansas basketball has done just fine the last five years without embarrassing the team that Mizzou trotted out on the court twice a season. But neither school has anything as good as this was.
For Missouri, you can try to manufacture a rivalry with Arkansas. I mean, they're right next door and that high-pitched "Woo Pig" is awfully annoying and I guess if you really hold grudges for a long time you can still be mad at Mike Anderson for leaving. Eventually, your fanbase will be full of people who only know you were ever in another league because of the archives. They might see Tennessee and Arkansas and some others as the biggest rival. But it's not gonna be Kansas.
And for the Jayhawks? Who's your rival? The only people that think Kansas State has ever been a rival on the level of Missouri reside in Manhattan. Iowa State and Oklahoma have had better teams the last few years and there have been some big games. Wherever you end up when the Big 12 inevitably goes away will give you some new teams to mildly dislike much like the SEC has done for Tiger fans. But it's not gonna be Mizzou.
Sunday afternoon isn't going to change this. Bill Self has been pretty clear he still doesn't plan to play Missouri in a game that counts in the standings (until the NCAA Tournament committee doesn't offer him a choice). I don't think the Border War is coming back. And even if it eventually does, it's not going to mean as much. Non-conference college basketball games just count less.
But sports are supposed to entertain us, right? Missouri and Kansas on the basketball court? That entertains me. It has so many times in my life and it will on Sunday. I'm going to trade a few trash-talking texts with my friends who are Kansas fans (yes, I have some because I am secure enough to not just surround myself with people whose opinions are always the same as mine). I'm going to go back to Kansas City and cover the game in a sold out Sprint Center and it's going to feel like 1989...or 1999...or 2009 again. If only for a couple of hours.
The score isn't going to count. Not officially. But it's gonna count. The winning side is going to say it won the last game between the two and never let the losers forget that fact until whenever they play again. The losing side is going to say it was only an exhibition so we didn't really care anyway.
Kansas and Missouri are playing basketball again. Thank God. So if you don't care, that's okay I guess. I mean, I don't get to tell you what to think. But you're missing out.
