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Key Facts on Border War Rivalry
Posted on: August 6, 2025 at 12:25:44 CT
kp83 MU
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If you are trying to educate the uninitiated on the MU-kU football rivalry, what are the Top 10 facts you try to relate? Here is my shot. What would you add? Take out? Change?
1. Prior to Mizzou’s move to the SEC in 2012 and kU declining MU’s offer to continue the rivalry series, the football rivalry was the oldest west of the Mississippi.
2. The first MU-kU football game was in 1891 and the rivalry has been played 120 times, with Missouri leading the series with 57 wins, 54 losses and 9 ties.
3. MU and kU do not agree on the rivalry record, stemming from kUs upset of No. 1- ranked MU in 1960 when they defied Big Eight Conference rules by using an ineligible player, resulting in a post-season conference ruling that kU must forfeit the victory, which kU refuses to acknowledge.
4. In order to help prevent kU from terminating their college football program, the Missouri Valley Conference ruled that games should be played on the college campuses (the first 20 games had been almost exclusively played in Kansas City). The first on these on-campus rivalry games was played in Columbia in 1911, and was the start of Mizzou’s renowned homecoming tradition.
5. kU has long been the University of Missouri’s most intense rival, as illustrated by this quote from the 1896 Savitar (MU student yearbook): “Missouri and Kansas are rivals in so many things that each would rather defeat the other than gain victories over all the rest of the world.”
6. The intensity of the football rivalry is tied to the vicious fighting along the Missouri-Kansas border during the Civil War. This rivalry origin was referred to in a 1909 statement by venerable University of Missouri School of Journalism dean Walter Williams: “The annual football game between the University of Missouri and Kansas is but a continuation of the border warfare of earlier times.”
7. The kU football team was not named after a cartoon bird. When kU fielded their first football team in 1891, they chose the name of Jayhawkers (shortened to Jayhawks decades later). The term “Jayhawkers” came into widespread use during the Civil War, when it was used in reference to the variety of criminals, independent military bands and rogue federal troops from Kansas that inflicted a widespread campaign of plundering, arson and murder on the civilian population of western Missouri.
8. The man most closely associated with the term Jayhawkers was Charles Jennison, who recruited and commanded the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, popularly known as Jennison’s Jayhawkers. Jennison was and is generally regarded by historians as a vicious scoundrel who used the Civil War and abolition as cover for plundering for profit. Late in the Civil War, Jennison was court-martialed over charges that included crimes against Missouri civilians, and was dishonorably discharged from the Union Army.
9. In 2017, kU decided to use a special uniform to honor the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, and Charles Jennison in particular, in a “Salute to Service” promotion. This purported “salute to the military” honored the same unit that had been characterized by the Union military command as a disgrace and the same man that had been dishonorably discharged from the Union Army. The kU Athletic Department defended their promotion by stating they were aware of Jennison’s sordid legacy, “but felt his contributions to the abolitionist cause outweighed any unsavory actions”.
10. For as long as the kU athletic teams are called the Jayhawks and kU continues to push the romanticized narrative of the jayhawkers as noble abolitionists while minimizing their crimes against Missourians, there will likely always be some tension between MU and KU fans over the historical basis of the rivalry.
Edited by kp83 at 12:27:30 on 08/06/25
1. Prior to Mizzou’s move to the SEC in 2012 and kU declining MU’s offer to continue the rivalry series, the football rivalry was the oldest west of the Mississippi.
2. The first MU-kU football game was in 1891 and the rivalry has been played 120 times, with Missouri leading the series with 57 wins, 54 losses and 9 ties.
3. MU and kU do not agree on the rivalry record, stemming from kUs upset of No. 1- ranked MU in 1960 when they defied Big Eight Conference rules by using an ineligible player, resulting in a post-season conference ruling that kU must forfeit the victory, which kU refuses to acknowledge.
4. In order to help prevent kU from terminating their college football program, the Missouri Valley Conference ruled that games should be played on the college campuses (the first 20 games had been almost exclusively played in Kansas City). The first on these on-campus rivalry games was played in Columbia in 1911, and was the start of Mizzou’s renowned homecoming tradition.
5. kU has long been the University of Missouri’s most intense rival, as illustrated by this quote from the 1896 Savitar (MU student yearbook): “Missouri and Kansas are rivals in so many things that each would rather defeat the other than gain victories over all the rest of the world.”
6. The intensity of the football rivalry is tied to the vicious fighting along the Missouri-Kansas border during the Civil War. This rivalry origin was referred to in a 1909 statement by venerable University of Missouri School of Journalism dean Walter Williams: “The annual football game between the University of Missouri and Kansas is but a continuation of the border warfare of earlier times.”
7. The kU football team was not named after a cartoon bird. When kU fielded their first football team in 1891, they chose the name of Jayhawkers (shortened to Jayhawks decades later). The term “Jayhawkers” came into widespread use during the Civil War, when it was used in reference to the variety of criminals, independent military bands and rogue federal troops from Kansas that inflicted a widespread campaign of plundering, arson and murder on the civilian population of western Missouri.
8. The man most closely associated with the term Jayhawkers was Charles Jennison, who recruited and commanded the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, popularly known as Jennison’s Jayhawkers. Jennison was and is generally regarded by historians as a vicious scoundrel who used the Civil War and abolition as cover for plundering for profit. Late in the Civil War, Jennison was court-martialed over charges that included crimes against Missouri civilians, and was dishonorably discharged from the Union Army.
9. In 2017, kU decided to use a special uniform to honor the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, and Charles Jennison in particular, in a “Salute to Service” promotion. This purported “salute to the military” honored the same unit that had been characterized by the Union military command as a disgrace and the same man that had been dishonorably discharged from the Union Army. The kU Athletic Department defended their promotion by stating they were aware of Jennison’s sordid legacy, “but felt his contributions to the abolitionist cause outweighed any unsavory actions”.
10. For as long as the kU athletic teams are called the Jayhawks and kU continues to push the romanticized narrative of the jayhawkers as noble abolitionists while minimizing their crimes against Missourians, there will likely always be some tension between MU and KU fans over the historical basis of the rivalry.
Edited by kp83 at 12:27:30 on 08/06/25
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Key Facts on Border War Rivalry - kp83 MU - 8/6 12:25:44