Missouri is adding a new line to its football history, and it comes with a familiar twist of Border War controversy.
The Tigers are now calling themselves national champions for the 1960 college football season after Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) formally recognized Dan Devine’s team earlier this month as the school’s first football national title.
Missouri plans to honor the 1960 squad at its home game against Troy on Sept. 19.
“We appreciate Sen. Schmitt and the U.S.
Senate for recognizing the accomplishments of our 1960 football team and for bringing renewed attention to a remarkable group of Tigers,” Mizzou Director of Athletics Laird Veatch said. “The 1960 team has an important place in Mizzou history, and after reviewing the historical record, we believe it is appropriate to honor that team as national champions.”
But the claim runs straight into the old Kansas-Missouri dispute.
Missouri finished with an 11-0 mark, but the Tigers also lost to Kansas 23-7 in a game that the former Big Eight Conference later recorded as a forfeit by the Jayhawks. That happened after running back Bert Coan was ruled ineligible by the dissolved league. With the result listed as a forfeit, Missouri went on to beat Navy 21-14 in the Orange Bowl.
The eligibility issue centered on funding for a trip to Chicago for an all-star game. According to original reporting by the Lawrence Journal-World, both Coan and Houston Oilers owner and KU benefactor Bud Adams said that funding happened before Coan became a student at KU. The Big Eight still ruled against Coan and Kansas, and the Jayhawks lost their league championship status because of the forfeiture.
Missouri’s title claim also leans on the outdated Poling System, which last recognized a national champion in 1984, when it selected BYU. That system named Missouri the 1960 champion in the wake of the disputed Kansas game.
Kansas, meanwhile, still lists itself as the winner of the 1960 Border War and keeps a 7-2 (6-0-1 Big Eight) record in its official books.
Now Missouri heads to Lawrence for the next chapter of the rivalry, this time arriving with a national championship claim in hand. The timing adds another layer to a game already loaded with history: it will be exactly 66 years since the matchup that helped define one team’s season and upend the other’s.
Kansas hosts Missouri on Friday, Sept. 11, at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.
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