Football season has barely gotten rolling, and already Missouri and Kansas are back at it with bragging rights hanging in the balance. Friday night’s Border War arrives with both teams fresh off Week 1 home wins, but the early signs suggest this one has the ingredients to get messy, loud and unforgettable.
Kansas is the underdog heading into the 7 p.m. matchup on Fox, yet the Jayhawks have enough pieces to make this more than a simple road test for Missouri. David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium will host the rivalry for the second straight year, and this one carries a little extra weight: it lands on the 25th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11, one of the reasons school officials changed the rivalry’s official name from Border War to Border Showdown in 2004.
The setting is familiar in some ways and unusual in others. KU last hosted Missouri in October 2005.
Mizzou won the game in Columbia last season, 42-31, and the broader rivalry remains tangled even in the record books. Missouri claims a 58-54-9 edge, while Kansas lists it as 57-55-9 in Mizzou’s favor.
The Tigers also enter as the proclaimed 1960 national champions, a title that remains disputed because of Missouri’s loss to Kansas that season. Kansas later forfeited that win because of a player who was deemed ineligible.
In other words, this is one of those games where the details tend to blur once the whistle blows. The history is deep, the emotions are obvious, and the atmosphere should be exactly what a rivalry game is supposed to be.
On the field, the biggest change for Kansas is the return of Andy Kotelnicki. Lance Leipold’s offense has carried Kotelnicki’s fingerprints for years, but it never looked quite the same after Kotelnicki left for Penn State two years ago. Now he’s back, and the Jayhawks are once again showing the kind of offensive wrinkles that make them hard to pin down.
Kansas used multiple backs and tight ends, moved pieces around with constant motion, and still leaned on the downhill run game that remains its preferred way to score. That package was on full display in the 51-6 win over Long Island, when the Jayhawks rolled up 277 rushing yards and five touchdowns.
Redshirt-sophomore quarterback Isaiah Marshall was efficient and explosive in that opener. He went 14-for-19 for 246 yards and two touchdowns, and he added 49 yards on the ground. He also showed a promising connection with Buffalo transfer Nik McMillan, who finished with six catches for 130 yards.
That kind of production is part of why last year’s matchup ended up so high-scoring, and it raises the possibility of another shootout.
Still, there’s a reason to think this one could look different: both teams are bringing young quarterbacks into a rivalry game that will ask a lot of them.
Marshall has barely scratched the surface of college football. He attempted only three passes last season across nine games, and although he won the job over Cole Ballard, this will be the first real test of his career against a Missouri defense that won’t make anything easy.
Missouri’s Austin Simmons is in a different spot, but he’s still early in his time as a Tiger. He turned in a strong debut against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, an HBCU, after arriving from Ole Miss with 17 games and two starts already on his résumé.
This will be his fourth college start, and he appears wired for the long haul in the SEC. Even so, early-season mistakes can still show up fast.
If this game turns into a quarterback duel, that may decide it.
Kansas’ defense could make sure it doesn’t become comfortable for either offense. The Jayhawks mixed pressure with straight rushes against Long Island, and they’ll likely bring the heat again. Edge rusher Leroy Harris III led the way with four tackles for loss, while linebacker Trey Lathan - who is on the preseason Butkus Award watch list - remains central to what Kansas does, both as a blitzer and as the player patrolling the middle.
Lathan is also donating $50 per tackle this season to Miami Children’s Hospital and WVU Children’s Hospital.
D.K. McDonald has brought an aggressive edge since becoming the Jayhawks’ sole defensive coordinator last year, and that approach figures to test a Missouri offensive line that may be dealing with a hampered Cayden Green at left tackle.
That’s part of what makes this meeting so important for both programs. Missouri is chasing SEC success and a College Football Playoff berth in Eli Drinkwitz’s seventh season. Kansas is trying to push itself back toward bowl contention after six years of Jalon Daniels and a new look under Leipold and Kotelnicki.
The two programs are in different places, but they’re also standing at similar crossroads. Missouri’s Memorial Stadium has already completed its renovation, while The Booth still has another year to go under limited capacity. Last season’s Border War was followed by Missouri stumbling to eight wins and Kansas dropping its final three to miss out on a bowl.
This time, the stakes are less about one game than what it can set in motion. The next scheduled meeting in the rivalry isn’t until 2031, so both sides know the opportunity in front of them is rare.
Expect the clip to be emptied.
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