#89 Kansas

Lawrence, KS

David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium

September 11, 2026

Missouri 38 - Kansas 21 (ESPN Recap)

Three Big XII games in 24 hours with 4 buddies across Kansas and Utah. Ambitious trip but it went smoothly and was a lot of fun!

Led off with Missouri @ Kansas in Lawrence on Friday night. These two schools really dislike each other. Formerly a “Border War” and now labeled a “Border Showdown,” the KU approach to the game was to bring it back to 1800s slavery roots with this epic twitter post that they also played on the jumbotron preha,e. https://x.com/KU_Football/status/2098169671824404786?s=43&t=pr09Jb-sfbBpXOQPHzMTDw

Bold strategy when you come out with a pretty flat football team and get whooped at home 37-21.

The play of the game (and of the play of the weekend from our three games) was this decision by the Kansas QB on 2nd and 11 from his own 30 in a close game very early Q3. Every angle and every time I watch it I keep laughing. It wasn’t 4 th down. It wasn’t game on the line. He wasn’t heaving it into the endzone. Insane insane decision and a ridiculously improbably outcome for a 16 yard catch and first down.

Pregame tailgating in Lawrence was unique. It takes place just south of the stadiums across 4-square blocks at peoples houses and backyards. No other way to describe it than it being Halloween for tailgating: all the tailgates are in the yards of the small residential area and people are walking around bouncing between them. Unique but pretty solid as we walked around. Big XII fans were loving Stephen's iconic sweater. I bet they remembered meeting him when they saw the Oregon loss a few hours later. We bet on a fun fpotball throwing game on this kid's set where he inserted himself as a DB occassionally and I won 7-6 after 3 possessions.

Kansas really went hard with aggressive tarp messages for the tailgate and I couldn’t even bring myself to take a picture of the “Missouri did 9/11” as the game was being played on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Grassroots marketing effort by OG Sports was pretty clever. Send a strong dude who is not at risk of getting jumped for his cash wad, let him show off the cash wad and offer free money to people, and then the catch is you have to download and real money deposit $20 to get a free $20 bill from him.

Chatted with Noah who was a knowledgeable alum but didn’t let us use his fancy corn hole boards, and then played Brian and Dylan in a money game on 32.5’ long set.

Shot gunned a beer and headed in. Cool flyover for the game.

The first 20 minutes was 0-0 with a missed FG early and that wasn’t great for Sebastian and my O52.5. Then mid Q2, another missed FG, but this time blocked and returned for a TD.

The game was pretty one-sided from there. Stadiums need more bathrooms or port-a-potties or outhouses because there was only one men’s room for an entire side of the stadium and the line to pee was about 18 minute~!s long.

Somehow, we got there on the Over and started the weekend off right.

If the aggressive signs hanging from houses and twitter video montage wasn’t indicative enough of the dislike these programs have for one another, Missouri took over on downs on the Kansas 9 yard line with 38 seconds left up 17 and with Kansas out of timeouts. One victory formation kneel from getting out of there with a win, but instead ran this play action pass on first down, taking a shot at the endzone.

Diabolical stuff.

Explanation from coach Drink:

"I'm just glad that this whole right-versus-wrong bullcrap that was started just got settled," Drinkwitz said after the No. 23 Tigers' 38-21 victory. "... 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."

Then coach tweeted this, which went viral:

Walked down the main drag called Massachusetts Street to see the college bars, all of which had insane lines. Found our way to a quieter sports bar and then eventually got a Model Y Uber home for the 5 of us, which meant 4 grown men somehow squeezed into the back seat of a Model Y.

Early wake-up tomorrow for 8am car to take us across the state of Kansas to Manhattan.