In college football, there are rivalries that date back generations.
Kansas used the actual Civil War to hype up a college football game with Missouri
That’s one way to promote a college football rivalry.
Mark Schofield is a former college quarterback and attorney covering the NFL and F1.
Including one that has its roots in the Civil War.
That would be the ‘Border War’ between Kansas and Missouri, that is renewed on Friday when the 1-0 Jayhawks host the 1-0 Tigers, who are ranked No. 23 in the latest edition of the AP Top-25. The 122nd installment of this rivalry game was expected to be intense, but Kansas turned up that heat throughout this entire week.
It began earlier in the week, when the team shared this image:
This is from a mural painted by John Steuart Curry titled “Tragic Prelude,” which is located in the rotunda of the Kansas State Capitol Building. It depicts abolitionist John Brown in the center, holding a Bible in one hand, and a rifle in the other. He is surrounded by both Union and Confederate soldiers, with him at the middle trying in vain to hold them back.
Brown was also at the center of the fight to prevent Kansas from becoming a slave state, in the buildup to the American Civil War.
That painting was again featured in a video shared by the Kansas football team on Friday, depicting the game tonight as one between heroes, and villains:
“It’s fueled by a hatred, passed down through generations. Our roots reach back to the Civil War, when blood was spilled over what you believe in.”
That’s how it begins, and it only heats up from there.
In addition to the reference to Brown, there is also imagery featuring William Quantrill, who led a pro-Confederate group known as Quantrill’s Raiders throughout the Missouri-Kansas border. Quantrill’s Raiders were responsible for an attack on Lawrence, Kansas known as the Lawrence Massacre, in which 150 men and boys were killed at the hands of his outfit. There is also reference to the Jay-Hawkers, anti-slavery fighters in Kansas who clashed with Quantrill’s Raiders and others in hte buildup to the Civil War.
All college football rivalries are fierce.
But from Kansas’ point of view, this is a matter of right versus wrong.
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