It's hard to believe, but Saturday's Big 12 matchup in Kansas City between Kansas and Missouri is the biggest college football game of the year.
The two teams are perennial also-rans in the conference's north division, but Kansas is currenty ranked 2nd nationally, and Missouri, depending on which poll you're reading, is ranked third or fourth.
But like most rivalries, this one is more than a game. But unlike most rivalries, tensions began mounting before the football was invented--all the way back to 1856 and "Bleeding Kansas," a struggle that led to the Civil War.
From the Lawrence Journal-World & News:
"The violence between Kansas and Missouri in history started with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854," said Virgil Dean, who works for the Kansas Historical Society. "Missourians had a real interest in making sure Kansas was a slave state — in promoting the expansion of slavery."
That didn't sit well with Kansans, including the aforementioned (John) Brown. So Kansans and Missourians fought. A lot.
"In the mid-19th century, there wasn't anything more controversial than slavery," Dean said.
For years, from 1854 until the end of the Civil War in 1865, the two sides committed atrocities of varying degrees. Neither side was perfect, though in the end, Kansas could say it was fighting against slavery and Missouri, well, wasn't.
That's John Brown on the right, from a mural inside the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.
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UPDATE November 24: Missouri won tonight's game, 36-28. Kansas got off to a slow start, they finished strongly, but the clock ran out on the Jayhawks.
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My Kansas Kronikles: Lawrence
Bob Dole, John Edwards, two 28,000 sq. ft. buildings
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