 |
|
Here are a couple of MU-KU homecoming tidbits...
Posted on: November 20, 2020 at 11:46:58 CT
kp83 MU
Posts:
5220
Member For:
26.38 yrs
Level:
User
M.O.B. Votes:
0
...from an article on the rivalry in the October 2015 Missouri Historical Review.
The first on-campus contest between the two schools was played in Columbia in 1911. On the eve of the game, the local newspaper could not resist a jab at the Kansans and an allusion to the historical basis of the rivalry: “Columbians, students, you are to be hosts tomorrow as never before. No other strictly Missouri town has ever been called upon to treat invading Kansans as guests.” The end of the Kansas City Thanksgiving Day tradition led to the start of a new ritual. Prior to the 1911 game, MU’s football coach and athletics director, Chester Brewer, sent postcards to three hundred former Missouri football players inviting them to Columbia for the game against Kansas: “Come on home, you Missouri M men (football lettermen)…Come back and shake hands with your old pals and other old M men and help beat the Jayhawkers.” This 1911 game was the start of Missouri’s homecoming tradition, and Kansas followed suit in 1912, declaring the game against the Tigers in Lawrence their inaugural homecoming. For decades, the annual KU-MU game served as the homecoming game for the host school.
Anger over the 1960 game and the subsequent forfeit resulted in the darkest period in the KU-MU sports rivalry. Bill Mayer, a Lawrence sports editor, blamed “Don Faurot, long a hateful anti-Jayhawk,” for KU’s troubles in the Coan case. When the Missouri basketball team traveled to Lawrence the following February, the crowd in Allen Fieldhouse booed so loudly that the visiting players could not be introduced. When Kansas came to Missouri’s Brewer Fieldhouse in March, the atmosphere was charged. In the second half, Jayhawk star forward Wayne Hightower powered past Tiger Charlie Henke for a score, then turned and punched Henke between the eyes. The benches cleared, perhaps one hundred Tiger fans spilled onto the court, and the “Brawl at Brewer” was under way. Play resumed after ten minutes, but a much longer delay was contemplated by the schools. “If this extreme bitterness continues,” Kansas athletic director Arthur “Dutch” Lonborg told the Associated Press days after the game, “we will have to discontinue playing each other, at least for a while.” Although the rivalry games continued, it is perhaps not coincidental that after the Bert Coan controversy and the Brawl at Brewer, a long-standing rivalry tradition was suspended. Missouri fans that ventured into Lawrence for the 1961 football game were treated not to the traditional homecoming festivities, but to a cordon of patrolmen and police dogs around the KU goal posts. Twenty years passed before the rivalry game was again featured by either school in its homecoming celebration.
https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/mhr/id/57018
The first on-campus contest between the two schools was played in Columbia in 1911. On the eve of the game, the local newspaper could not resist a jab at the Kansans and an allusion to the historical basis of the rivalry: “Columbians, students, you are to be hosts tomorrow as never before. No other strictly Missouri town has ever been called upon to treat invading Kansans as guests.” The end of the Kansas City Thanksgiving Day tradition led to the start of a new ritual. Prior to the 1911 game, MU’s football coach and athletics director, Chester Brewer, sent postcards to three hundred former Missouri football players inviting them to Columbia for the game against Kansas: “Come on home, you Missouri M men (football lettermen)…Come back and shake hands with your old pals and other old M men and help beat the Jayhawkers.” This 1911 game was the start of Missouri’s homecoming tradition, and Kansas followed suit in 1912, declaring the game against the Tigers in Lawrence their inaugural homecoming. For decades, the annual KU-MU game served as the homecoming game for the host school.
Anger over the 1960 game and the subsequent forfeit resulted in the darkest period in the KU-MU sports rivalry. Bill Mayer, a Lawrence sports editor, blamed “Don Faurot, long a hateful anti-Jayhawk,” for KU’s troubles in the Coan case. When the Missouri basketball team traveled to Lawrence the following February, the crowd in Allen Fieldhouse booed so loudly that the visiting players could not be introduced. When Kansas came to Missouri’s Brewer Fieldhouse in March, the atmosphere was charged. In the second half, Jayhawk star forward Wayne Hightower powered past Tiger Charlie Henke for a score, then turned and punched Henke between the eyes. The benches cleared, perhaps one hundred Tiger fans spilled onto the court, and the “Brawl at Brewer” was under way. Play resumed after ten minutes, but a much longer delay was contemplated by the schools. “If this extreme bitterness continues,” Kansas athletic director Arthur “Dutch” Lonborg told the Associated Press days after the game, “we will have to discontinue playing each other, at least for a while.” Although the rivalry games continued, it is perhaps not coincidental that after the Bert Coan controversy and the Brawl at Brewer, a long-standing rivalry tradition was suspended. Missouri fans that ventured into Lawrence for the 1961 football game were treated not to the traditional homecoming festivities, but to a cordon of patrolmen and police dogs around the KU goal posts. Twenty years passed before the rivalry game was again featured by either school in its homecoming celebration.
https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/mhr/id/57018
Please explain why this message is being reported.
MESSAGE THREAD
Here are a couple of MU-KU homecoming tidbits... - kp83 MU - 11/20 11:46:58