Mizzou’s Clinching of Border War Puts Success into Perspective
With Kansas advancing to the Final Four this weekend, coupled with Missouri’s shocking early exit from March Madness, these are dark times indeed for Tiger Nation. But there has been a silver lining for Mizzou Athletics that has been slightly overlooked due to the hustle and bustle of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
On March 18, the No. 12 Missouri Tigers softball team beat archrival Kansas 9-0 in six innings, capping a three-game sweep of the Jayhawks which saw the Tigers outscore their opponents 24-0. This is a great feat for Mizzou and its softball program, one of the elite squads in the country, but it also represented something greater than that. It clinched the 2011-12 M&I Bank Border Showdown trophy for Mizzou for the sixth consecutive season.
Everyone knows about the Border War, one of the fiercest and hate-filled rivalries in the nation. The Border Showdown, besides being a more political correct term for the rivalry, is basically a scoreboard for how the two programs fare against one another in all sports offered by both schools.
Each sport is worth three points, which can be split over multiple games, and the points are awarded to the winner of the head-to-head matchups throughout the season. The school with the most points at the end of the year is declared the winner. For example, when Missouri beat Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium on Nov. 26 24-10, Mizzou was awarded three points, because there is only one football game between the two schools. When there are multiple games played within one season, the points are split, into either 1.5 points for sports like volleyball or basketball that play twice annually, or one point for each baseball and softball game which play three-game series. There are also bonus points to be had based on the teams’ performances in certain Big XII championship events.
Mizzou has won the series every year since 2006-07 and eight times out of the ten years since its inception in 2002-03. Its largest margin of victory came in that 2002-03 year when Missouri won by a score of 32-8.5, but it has a chance to eclipse that mark this year. Mizzou has been dominant this year over Kansas, currently holding a 21-4 lead in the series with 14 points still to be had. Kansas has only gained points by splitting both men’s and women’s basketball series and finishing third in in the Big XII indoor track & field championship meet. It shows the overall strength of Missouri’s athletic program, especially in playing Kansas, and that Tiger fans can look at several programs that are successful, rather than pouring all their attention into one sport (men’s basketball for instance).
Kansas fans are quick to point to the all-time record between the two men’s basketball teams (172-95 in favor of Kansas) and say that it isn’t even a rivalry because of the disparity of wins and losses. But there is more to the rivalry than just basketball games. It encompasses the entire schools and each sport that are offered on both sides of the border.
Mizzou fans can agree that it’s not a close rivalry, but in a different way. Mizzou has claimed victory in the Border Showdown eight out of ten years that it has existed, an .800 winning percentage. Kansas’ victories in men’s basketball is only a .644 winning percentage, granted with a much larger sample size.
There is no denying that Kansas is an elite college basketball program, with a pedigree that KU fans seem to have engraved in their brains and are quick to bring up in any conversation. But when looking at the rivalry from a broad perspective, Missouri has been dominant when it comes to taking care of business against their rival for the past decade. So while you’re watching the Jayhawks take on Ohio State this weekend in the Final Four, even though it may hurt to see their season continue after the Tigers’ ended so abruptly, Tiger fans can take solace in the fact that, as a whole, Missouri will have beaten Kansas for the sixth straight year.