Kansas and Missouri played their annual Border Showdown football game on Friday, and the pregame hype turned into a real controversy before a snap was even taken.
Kansas’s social media team released a hype video ahead of the game that used Civil War and slavery imagery to needle its rival. The video framed Kansas as the historical “hero” and Missouri as the “villain,” pointing to Missouri’s position on the side of slavery during the Civil War. It included Civil War-era newspaper clippings and appearances by abolitionist John Brown and “Bushwhacker” leader William Quantrill.
The video went viral, pulling in more than 12,000 reposts and 34 million views.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz did not take it well.
“I was a little disappointed,” Drinkwitz said. “I thought that was uncalled for. Especially on 9/11 when we need more unity now than ever before. I’m just glad that this ‘right versus wrong’ bullcrap that was started got settled on the football field, because it’s a football game.”
“I get there’s a past. But why are we stirring that bullcrap up? I was embarrassed for them, to be honest, and that’s why I tried to embarrass them at the end.”
Missouri backed up that statement on the field. The Tigers won 38-21 in a game that was tied at halftime before Missouri pulled away in the second half. Already up 10 points late in the fourth quarter, Missouri scored a touchdown on fourth down, then got the ball back with 28 seconds remaining after Kansas turned the ball over on downs.
Rather than take a knee and run out the clock, Missouri backup quarterback Matt Zollers dropped back and threw an incomplete pass into the end zone. The Tigers ran the ball on the next play to close out the win, but the point had already been made.
Drinkwitz confirmed afterward that the decision not to kneel was intentional, a direct response to the video.
“I mean, if they’re gonna be weird about it, what’s the point?” Drinkwitz said after the win. “If they wanna have a football game and have a great rivalry on the border, awesome let’s do it. But, if we wanna make it deeper than that man. Like, we left Kansas bleeding again. Call it good.”
