Kansas and Missouri know each other like the backs of their hands.
The two teams were in the same athletic conference from 1907 to 2012, facing each other every year until Missouri left for the Southeastern Conference.
The programs meet in the “Border Showdown,” nicknamed the Hy-Vee Hoops Border Showdown for basketball games, but after the conference move, the Tigers and the Jayhawks wouldn’t face each other until 2017 in an exhibition basketball game. The rivalry was officially renewed in December 2021 when Kansas won 102-65.
This rivalry is believed by many to have its origins in the Civil War and violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery elements that took place in Kansas and frontier towns of Missouri in the 1850s. However, a professor at the University of Kansas doesn’t think that is exactly the case. History professor Jennifer Weber claimed these ideas were not introduced until the 1970s, and didn’t seep into popular imagination until 1990 — at that point, the athletic rivalry was decades old.
The topic remains a matter of debate, but a rebuttal to the professor’s analysis mentioned a reference made on the 1891 game opening to the 1854-1861 Border War. A University of Missouri professor said that in 1910, “The annual football game … is but a continuation of the border warfare of earlier times,” while a former Kansas coach had a similar view of the rivalry, saying in 1917, “No wonder the border warfare terms of ‘Jayhawk’ and ‘Bushwhacker’ were revived, for in many ways football is a worthy successor to war.”
The annual rivalry game was called the Border War until 2004, when the name was changed to Border Showdown.
The main rivalry comes in basketball, and the Jayhawks lead the all-time series 176–95.
The football rivalry ended in 2011 and hasn’t been played since, but at the time, it was the second-most played rivalry in Division I history and still ranks eighth 13 years later. Missouri leads the series 57–54–9. Since 2007, the winner takes home the Lamar Hunt Trophy, named after the late Kansas City Chiefs owner who envisioned bringing the rivalry games to Arrowhead Stadium, where the NFL team plays.
Kansas stayed in the Big 12, and Missouri left. The teams have played 26 times since that change in sports such as softball, soccer and volleyball, most recently adding men’s basketball and baseball back to that list. Missouri leads 14–10–1 since the departure.
Football hasn’t been back since 2012, and won’t be back this season either, but fans of both programs likely have Sept. 6, 2025 circled in the calendar as the rivalry returns to Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri.
