The end of one of the big college rivalries might come today at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, where Kansas and Missouri will play a Big 12 football game.
We know for sure these two teams will probably never play another conference game, since Missouri is jumping to the SEC next
Today's Missouri-Kansas game at Arrowhead Stadium might be the last between the two teams.
season. And in take-my-ball-and-go-home fashion, Kansas has expressed no desire to continue to play the Tigers in anything. Any time or anywhere.
Not your best move, KU. But I get it, you’re upset that your biggest rival – at least in the Kansas City metroplex – is moving on to the most powerful football conference in the country and that you’ve been reduced to a wallflower, following the leads of Texas and Oklahoma in your own league.
Listen, I think Missouri is taking a real gamble by joining the SEC. I think the potential exists for the Tigers’ football program to get swallowed up. But I also think there’s a chance Mizzou could thrive in its new conference. And it’s obvious that everyone connected with Missouri is eager for a new challenge.
Meanwhile, Kansas expresses its desire to hold together the Big 12, which has now lost three former members of the old Big Eight with Nebraska and Colorado having departed last year for the Big 10 and Pac 12, respectively. Problem is, as is clearly evident, the Big 12 is not holding together. It’s been broken apart, leaving Kansas and also Kansas State without some of its best and most long-term rivalries.
Kansas officials look petty when they say they’re finished with Missouri. Are they really upset with the Tigers for leaving the Big 12 or is this mostly envy? I have to believe it’s a lot of the latter. It has to rub Kansas that Mizzou’s football program is at a level where the SEC would be interested in bringing the Tigers aboard. Meanwhile, the Jayhawks are huge underdogs today at Arrowhead against MU. There will be sections of empty seats for this game and a lot of the reason for that is that Kansas fans have written off their team.
The conference realignment that has taken place in the past couple of years is a strong reality check for Kansas. It’s 90 percent about big-time college football in college athletics today. Basketball, which is KU’s sport, doesn’t matter much when these conferences shuffle.
So Missouri – which was snubbed by the Big 10 last year when that conference instead added Nebraska – has gotten out with its head held high. The SEC – the big, bad SEC – wanted the Tigers. The Tigers might rue the day they ever set foot in that football hotbed, but for now they have to be proud of themselves.
Kansas, meanwhile, hasn’t been the apple in anyone’s eye. And you know how that rubs the Jayhawks. We can blame it on football, which has collapsed after a few good seasons under Mark Mangino. Now KU has one of the worst programs in the country under Turner Gill, one that has suffered numerous humiliating losses in Gill’s two seasons.
He’s probably fighting for his job today at Arrowhead and, given the current state of college athletics in which football is clearly king, he’s fighting uphill.
If Kansas has learned anything from conference realignment, it’s that it can’t suffer with a struggling football program anymore and expect to have much value. The Jayhawks have to figure out a way to win football games in a conference in which they rank dead last, with West Virginia and TCU on the way.
Missouri coach Gary Pinkel helped make the Tigers a strong football entity. Even though Mizzou never won a conference championship or played in a BCS bowl, the consistent strength of its football program allowed it to have choices.
Kansas doesn’t have choices. Kansas is stuck with a sub-par football program and a coach who is probably going to become a casuality of the times.