Yes, the grapes are sour today. Yes, the emotions are still raw. If you’ve read me at all, you know how I feel about even playing this series. I hated it since five seconds after it was announced. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now.
Missouri won the game last night. That isn’t what this is about.
I don’t particularly care that Missouri threw toward the end zone with 28 seconds left while leading by 17. If Kansas doesn’t want Missouri throwing the ball, stop them. We certainly haven’t spent
the last century worrying about Missouri’s feelings while burying them in every other sport, nor should we. Despite what Eli Drinkwitz apparently thinks, rivalry games are not group therapy. And the postgame press conference is not the place to lecture Kansas fans about what this rivalry is about.
Drinkwitz was upset by the video Kansas released before the game, which leaned heavily into the actual history behind the Kansas-Missouri rivalry: Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, William Quantrill, and the violence along the border before and during the Civil War.
Subtle? No.
Provocative? Obviously.
After the game, Drinkwitz had this to say:
“I’m just glad that this whole right-versus-wrong bullcrap that was started just got settled … It’s a football game. It’s an American football game. People love to come watch and cheer for their teams. It’s not even deeper than that. And I get there’s a past for it, but why are we stirring that bullcrap up? It’s 9/11. This country needs unity now more than ever. And I was embarrassed for them, to be honest. That’s why I tried to embarrass them at the end.”
Let’s be clear here. He said that Kansas had turned the rivalry into something it shouldn’t be. He questioned why KU was “stirring that bullcrap up,” insisted that this was about two teams playing football and wasn’t any deeper than that, invoked the 25th anniversary of September 11 as a reason Americans should be emphasizing unity, and said the video was part of the reason he wanted to embarrass Kansas at the end.
You know what? Fine. If Eli Drinkwitz wants to argue that Kansas went too far with the video, he can make that argument. But spare me the rest of it.
Yes, Missouri embarrassed Kansas on the scoreboard last night.
Drinkwitz embarrassed himself afterward.
Kansas and Missouri have both spent decades leaning into the history, hatred, and mythology of this rivalry. Nobody suddenly discovered Friday night that the Border War has roots deeper than football. The embarrassing part is acting shocked by it now.
Missouri has been perfectly happy to call this “war,” to talk about its Civil War roots, to teach its players about 1854, and to declare that “The Border War never dies.” But Kansas makes the history explicit, and suddenly we’re supposed to pretend this is just two teams playing football? Come on.
National coverage has mostly treated Drinkwitz and Missouri’s response as part of the entertainment; ESPN apparently thinks they are hilarious. Meanwhile, local coverage is already asking whether Kansas fans want to keep the rivalry going. Fine, I guess. I had a different question, though: Does anything Eli Drinkwitz said last night square with what he and Missouri have been saying about this rivalry for years?
KUSports at least noticed how strange the whole controversy was. But nobody seems particularly interested in checking whether Drinkwitz’s lecture survives contact with his own record.
What I found out was that apparently Eli Drinkwitz has never met Eli Drinkwitz.
Turns out, there are plenty of receipts.
Last summer, as Missouri prepared to play Kansas for the first time since voluntarily leaving the Big 12, Drinkwitz was asked about the rivalry at SEC Media Days. He explained the Civil War-era origins of Missouri’s Tiger nickname, called the rivalry “very deep,” and said his players understood its historical implications and importance to the state.
Then, during an appearance on SEC This Morning, Drinkwitz reportedly made things considerably clearer: “This thing goes back to the Civil War. People died in this rivalry.”
Huh.
But Drinkwitz didn’t stop there.
Before last year’s game, he said Missouri had discussed its historical significance and context. He brought in speakers to educate his players about the rivalry. “We’ve embraced it, we understand it, we’ve taught about it.” At one point, Drinkwitz even referenced bringing someone in to tell the team about 1854.
For those who slept through American history, 1854 was not the year Kansas and Missouri first played football. What did happen in 1854 was passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state and helped ignite what became Bleeding Kansas.
So Missouri’s football program was quite literally teaching its players about the pre-football origins of the conflict.
But please, Kansas. Why are you stirring up all that old bullcrap?
This is hardly limited to Drinkwitz. Missouri’s official football game notes for the 2025 Kansas game introduced the matchup under a nice, understated headline: THIS IS WAR. Apparently, Strategic Communications missed the “it’s just a football game” meeting.
And Missouri Athletics has been doing this for years! Before the 2022 basketball game in Columbia, an official Mizzou Hoops hype video narrated by DeMarre Carroll declared: “This game is war, them versus us.”
Before the 2023 game, another official Mizzou Hoops video told viewers: “Let the war begin.”
In 2024, Missouri’s official basketball preview announced: “The Border War is back at Mizzou Arena.”
And then came December 2025. Nine months ago, Mizzou Athletics released an official hype video for the Kansas basketball game.
Not a fan account.
Not Tigerboard.
Not some random idiot screaming into the void (me).
The actual, officially sanctioned University of Missouri “Mizzou Athletics” account.
It opened this way: “This isn’t just a rivalry. This is the Border War.” The video described “a rivalry that spans over 100 years, with the hatred older than the hardwood.” Then: “It’s not just another game.” And finally: “The Border War never dies. And the next chapter starts now.”
But yet, nine months later, Eli Drinkwitz would like everyone to know that Kansas-Missouri is just two teams playing football and we shouldn’t make it any deeper than that.
Missouri has literally spent years marketing this rivalry by saying the exact opposite. Hell, go back to 2011. Missouri’s own athletic department explained that what separated Kansas-Missouri from ordinary geographic rivalries was that this one was “rooted in actual war, the Civil War.”
Their words!!!
Missouri has spent decades selling the history when the history made the rivalry seem cooler, meaner, older, and more important. Now Kansas talks about what that history actually was, and suddenly everyone needs to clutch their pearls?
Bleeding Kansas was, at its core, a fight over whether slavery would be allowed to expand into Kansas. Pro-slavery Missourians crossed the border to influence that outcome. Quantrill later led Confederate guerrillas into Lawrence and massacred civilians. Missouri fans are welcome to add all the historical nuance they want. There is plenty to add. None of it changes those facts.
And if Missouri doesn’t like the way it looks when Kansas puts that history into a 90-second hype video? That is not a Kansas problem. You don’t get to spend decades celebrating the fact that this rivalry grew out of actual warfare and then demand everyone stop discussing what the warfare was about because that part makes you uncomfortable. (That’s the Good vs. Evil part, in case it wasn’t obvious.)
I think Missouri loves the hatred. I think Missouri loves the Border War. I think Missouri even loves the history. They just apparently prefer it when nobody asks what the history was actually about.
Then there’s Drinkwitz invoking September 11.
I have no objection whatsoever to treating September 11 with solemnity, and I understand the point about national unity on the 25th anniversary. But there is something incredible about invoking a historical event from 25 years ago to make a moral point about the present while simultaneously complaining that Kansas invoked historical events from 170 years ago to make a moral point about the present.
One is remembering history. The other is “stirring bullcrap up.”
Make it make sense.
And then, after lecturing Kansas about violent historical imagery, stirring up the past, and national unity, Drinkwitz later added this gem: “We left Kansas bleeding again.”
But Kansas shouldn’t reference Bleeding Kansas because the subject is too divisive and this is only football.
Got it.
Look, Eli Drinkwitz can hate the Kansas video. Missouri fans can hate the Kansas video. They can call it tasteless, oversimplified, inflammatory, historically incomplete, or just stupid. I genuinely do not care. But Missouri DOES NOT get to spend years selling the Border War as something deeper than sports and then act scandalized when Kansas points out why there was a Border War in the first place.
Not after “THIS IS WAR.”
Not after “This game is war.”
Not after “Let the war begin.”
Not after “the hatred older than the hardwood.”
Not after “The Border War never dies.”
And certainly not after Eli Drinkwitz himself told America that people died in this rivalry, called its history “very deep,” and made sure his own players learned about 1854.
You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s just another football game, or the history matters.
Missouri has spent an awful lot of time telling us it matters.
They just didn’t like the history lesson Kansas gave them.
