COLUMBIA, Mo. — When Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing picked the turf out of his facemask following the safety that punctuated Missouri’s iconic 2007 win over the Jayhawks, present-day MU wideout Donovan Olugbode was not yet than 5 months old.
He wasn’t even 5 years old for the last Border War meeting in 2011.
Safety Jalen Catalon and right tackle Keagen Trost, Mizzou’s oldest players, were 6 years old for that 2007 showdown and 10 for the last game between the Tigers and Jayhawks.
Ten current Mizzou players weren’t even alive the last time the two rivals met in Columbia, during the 2006 season.
Missouri and Kansas haven’t played each other in nearly 14 years. For the 18- to 24-year-olds on the MU roster — and all of those enrolled at the University of Missouri as undergraduate students — that means the Border War is a foreign fight from another time.
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So when Chase Daniel and “Armageddon at Arrowhead†are at best fuzzy memories to players, how does a football program impress upon them the magnitude, the importance of the rivalry they’ll help revive?
Classes, of sorts.
MU coach Eli Drinkwitz brought in a variety of guest speakers over the summer to meet with the team and fill them in on why Tigers and Jayhawks loathe each other.
“We talked about how it started, we’ve talked about players and the big games and stuff like that,†safety and team captain Daylan Carnell said. “We’ve watched highlights too. They done showed us a whole bunch. We’ve seen a lot about it. We’ll definitely be ready. We know it’s coming.â€
With 120 meetings dating back to 1891, there’s plenty of ground to cover — even if the basketball rivalry has historically meant more than the football one.
“The first one was more of a historian type of talk: how like we’ve been playing, what’s the record, all that jazz,†center Connor Tollison, another team captain, said. “And then Andy Hill came and talked to us.â€
Hill, who recently retired from coaching after 18 years at Mizzou and several more with the Kansas City Chiefs, was a little more, well, colorful in his KU lesson than what a standard history lecture might include.
“He was yelling and screaming and cussing and whatnot,†Tollison said, “about (how) they don’t really like these guys. Nobody likes these guys. We don’t really like them.â€
Drinkwitz declined to elaborate on what messages were conveyed to his team during those summer meetings or who else, besides Hill and a historian, delivered them.
“The point of it is not what they said,†Drinkwitz said. “The point is to make sure that our fan base and our players understand that we know the significance, historically. We understand the importance. We’re not overlooking or undervaluing this game. We know it’s an important thing to our team. ... We got all that out of the way.â€
The talks were insightful for Mizzou players who didn’t know what they would be walking into this weekend — like starting quarterback Beau Pribula, who grew up a Penn State fan in Pennsylvania.
“I thought it was just a sports rivalry,†he said, “but I guess it goes beyond that.â€
Indeed it does, Beau. Indeed it does.
So the lessons to be learned for the Tigers are that the Border War dates back to a real war and spans more than a few generations — and the weight therein of a game that carries so much consequence to people across two states.
“It means a lot to a lot of people,†Drinkwitz said. “It’s a privilege to wear the ‘Mizzou’ on your chest. And when you wear Mizzou, you’re representing 6 million people in this state.â€
While the MU coaching staff has now tamped down rivalry talk to try to keep players focused on the fundamental elements of Saturday’s game, the summer meetings about this matchup were meant to provide the kindling for the fire that’s to come this weekend.
“You have a tangible thing that you’re playing for,†Drinkwitz said. “In college football, you don’t always have that after a game. Sometimes you just get an ‘atta boy.’ There ain’t no ‘atta boy’ after this one.â€
For at least one Missouri player, the lessons worked. Ask defensive end Zion Young, who grew up in Atlanta and started his collegiate career at Michigan State, what he learned about the Border War and it’s clear he gets it.
“I know what it takes,†Young said. “Hopefully, it’s going to be a bloodbath that game. Good luck to those guys.â€
