There's a scene about halfway through The Outlaw Josey Wales, right before Clint Eastwood guns down four Union soldiers, where his character follows a family into a general store. Once inside, the man behind the counter informs Grandma, who's just scolded Eastwood for his nasty tobacco habit, that the wheat he has is from Kansas, and the molasses is from Missouri. "We'll go without molasses then," the old woman says. "Everything from Missouri has a taint about it." A male companion warns her about watching her words now that they're headed to Texas; there are "lots of nice elements from Missouri coming west." "Never heard of nice things from Missouri coming west," she replies. "We're from Kansas — Jayhawkers — and proud of it."
When the clip came on the JumboTron at Allen Fieldhouse Saturday afternoon, just after the starting lineups for both Kansas and Missouri had been announced, the last four words were suffocated by the roar of the crowd. Josey Wales is set in 1865. The plot follows Eastwood as a Confederate Missourian who refuses to surrender to the Union army after a Kansan militia kills his family. Missouri and Kansas played their first basketball game 105 years ago, but the hatred behind the oldest rivalry west of the Mississippi dates back to before shots were ever fired at Fort Sumter. Everything about the Border War — the mascot names, the passion, the depth — is a product of some 170 years of enmity.
After the clip ended, a second video began — this one of Paul Pierce warning those who enter the Phog to pay heed. The crowd exploded again. The mob of blue bounced up and down, and I felt shivers from my spine to my scalp. Missouri and Kansas have shared a conference for 104 years, but next season, Mizzou will move to the SEC. When the realignment shakedown began again this fall, Missouri decided that leaving the Big 12 was a chance to achieve stability in an uncertain college sports landscape. The move means that next season, for the first time since 1908, MU and KU will not play each other. Both sides have said the onus falls on the other to reach out and make an effort to continue history, and both sides have denied that the responsibility should be theirs. As the Phog rocked, the no. 3 Tigers prepared to play the no. 5 Jayhawks in one of the biggest games in their shared history. The Border War was set to tip off for the 267th — and last — time.
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